Legacy
by CG
Summary: In a future where mutants are hunted by a mysterious group, the children of the X-Men  fight for freedom, to live their parents legacy and for their lives. FINALLY updated ^_^
1. Prologue

**The Very Uninformative Disclaimer-** Who created X-Men? A) Me B) Marvel or C) Gambit? Guess what! The answer is B, Marvel!!!! Wow! I didn't create X-Men, and I'm not really sure how Gambit could create himself. That would be just....odd 0_o anyway, also, some ideas and situations from this story were also taken from the book Shade's Children which is by Garth Nix. Not CG. Got it? Good. No suing? Good.   
  
**Rating-** PG-13 for violence and language.   
  
**Summary-** The year: 2025 AD in an alternate timeline. Mutants are hunted by a mysterious group known as "the hunters" and are either killed on the spot or brought to a mysterious place in Antarctica known as "Mutant City". All the X-Men we know and love are presumed dead, but their sons and daughters live on. This is their story as they live their parent's legacy as the Neo-X-Men.  
  
**Author's note-** Yes, I know I should be working on The Fifth Oracle, but then I got this idea that just couldn't wait. This one's a lot darker than The Fifth Oracle, and more violent, but give it a chance. Oh yeah, please don't flame me about anything having to do with who gets married and deaths and stuff. I chose based on who I know most about, and also who made the most sense. You can flame me about anything else, just not about that, 'kay? Kay! Enjoy the story. BTW: I know the title sucks, so if you have any better, more spiffy ideas, tell me, 'kay? Oh yes, some ideas came from the book "Shade's Children". If you haven't read it, read it! It's an awesome book! So yeah, on with the story ^_^. Expect me to update T.F.O. sometime this weekend, and possibly the next chapter of this too. Depends if I'm inspired or not.   
  
**LEGACY**  
  
>PROLOGUE<  
  
**2025 AD**

  
There is a mansion in Westchester, New York that extends the grasp of the law. The outside world thinks that it is merely a school for talented students. Once it had been the operating base of the X-Men, but after the originals left to go and leave normal lives, that changed. Now, it was the one refuge in the world for mutants.   
  
After the pass of the 2015 Mutant-tracking Act, everything started going down hill. Magneto would have called it the return of the Holocaust. Slowly, mutants were kicked out of their jobs, and banned from their schools. Then finally, it happened: the explosion. The hunters were formed. No one knew exactly who created them: someone in the government, but no one person could be blamed for it. They'd come and take everything, slashing, burning, and killing. If they met up with you and you were a mutant, you were dead meat. The choice was theirs: death, or Mutant City. No one quite knew what lay in the city in Alaska that was contained completely in a dome of red glass. Most people's best guess was concentration camp. Few escaped. Those that did were almost sure to die anyway, considering the tracker they carried, implanted in their arm, unless they made it to Westchester. Few did. Few knew it really existed.  
  
The mansion now was old, and rather unkempt as there were many more pressing problems than the appearance of the base. Years and years ago, the first five students had come there: Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Robert Drake, Hank McCoy, and Warren Worthington. Soon more and more joined, became the X-Men, and fought for the cause. Six years ago, the sons and daughters of six of them returned, as orphans, to fight for the cause.  
  



	2. Interview- Sabine LeBeau

**

...you are attempting to access a classified file. Please enter the Password.  
  
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Access Denied.  
  
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Access Granted  
  
>Accessing Data File #234243214<  
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Interview # 2342- Sabine LeBeau  
  
>Sabine<** Ah really don't know where to start. Mon dieu! This is harder than it sounds!  
  
**

Try the beginning

  
  
>Sabine<** Funny. Tres drole. Ah don't even know where the beginning is!   
  
**

Think about it

  
  
>Sabine<** Yah're no help! Merde! Ah guess Ah should begin with the last time Ah saw Maman and Papa.   
  
**

It works

  
  
>Sabine<** It was the first time Ah think Ah've ever seen them scared. Ah mean, Ah've seen them....concerned maybe...but nevah outright scared. Mais non! They were not dose kinds of people. Yah nevah saw them scared...it was right before the huntas came to N'awlins...it was so long ago. Ah can barely remember.  
  
**

Try

  
>Sabine<** Ah'm trying! You're not making it any easier. Anyway, Papa but a hand over my shoulder and he told me to run. Run. Run until Ah found Xavier. Ah didn't even know what that was at the time. They both hugged me. Ah can still hear their voices speakn' to me for the last time.   
  
Ah could swear they were afraid...even though Ah knew that maman and papa never got scared. Never. But they assured me that when Ah got to where Ah needed to go they'd be on the otha side. So Ah ran. Ah ran. Ah didn't look back! Ah was so young! Ah didn't know any better. Sill thought that fairy tales came true and that they'd really be waiting for me.   
**

How old were you?

  
  
>Sabine<** Neuf...Ah mean...I was nine.  
  
**

Did you ever see your parents again?

  
  
>PAUSE: 5 seconds<  
  


Sabine, did you ever see your parents again?

  
  
>PAUSE: 1 second<  
  
>Sabine<** Damnent! You know the answer to that as well as Ah do!  
  
**

Answer the question Sabine.

  
  
>PAUSE: 2 seconds<  
  
>SOUND: crying<  
  
>Sabine<** No...no...Ah never saw them again! Ah never heard them again! Dey told me dey would be there so Ah wouldn't worry! So ah wouldn't look back! So Ah'd live! Dey were taken to Mutant City if de hunters didn't get 'em already! No! Ah did not see them again! How can ya ask me that! Ah ran and Ah ran an' Ah used the plane ticket dey gave me and flew out to Westchester. Ah always hated airplanes. It was mah first time on one alone. Ah was terrified...pretended the whole time dat it was maman who was makn' me fly, just like she used to pick me up an' give me rides around the yard when Ah was little. An' Ah found the place an' Ah came here. Dat's all there is to tell! Nothn' more! Damnent! It was all mah fault! Ah never should 'ave left 'em. Ah souldn't 'ave run. Maybe wit the three of us fightn' togeatha we would 'ave survived. Or at least, we would've all died togeatha in peace, or we'd all be sittin' togeatha in dat hell-hole Mutant City! But Ah ran like a yellow-bellied coward! Ah ran! Ah ran an' left them alone to face it all themselves! Ah'm sucha coward!  
  
**

You did what they told you to. You were too young to know any better.

  
  
>SOUND: crying<  
  
>Sabine<** Den why do Ah feel so guilty? Dament! Why do Ah feel so guilty? Ah'd ratha 'ave died wit 'em!  
  
**

Sabine, you're here now. The second to return. Do you regret it?

  
  
>Sabine<** Well, Ah guess at least Ah'm doing something about it. But Ah miss them! Ah miss them! Ah wish Ah'd 'ave stayed an' fought wit 'em!  
  
**

You didn't have your powers yet, Sabine. It wouldn't have helped.

  
  
>Sabine<** Ah guess ya're right. The point is, Ah'm here now. Ah'm here in Westchester. Ah was the second to return. Ah fight for the cause. Ah really don' see the point in bring up painful memories. Por quoi...Ah mean...why do ya make us do these interviews?  
  
**

I need to have them on archive.

  
  
>Sabine<** Whatevah. Like ah said, Ah'm here now. Fightn' for the cause 'cause Ah've got nothin' else ta live for...oh...an' also for maman and papa. Ah know dey wanted me ta come here ta fight. Ah'm the oldest known living female mutant out of captivity.   
  
**

How old are you Sabine?

  
  
>Sabine<** Yah know very well how old Ah am.  
  
**

For the record, please

  
  
>SOUND: Sigh<  
  
>Sabine<** J'ai quinze ans...that is...Ah'm 15.  
  
**>End Interview Session<**   
  



	3. The Team

>ONE: The Team<

  
  
Tyler Grey-Summers sat, in the old, decrepit boathouse by the cove where he knew his parents once had stayed, head resting on his knees, his mess of red hair falling into his face over brown eyes, and wearing a beat-up pair of baggy jeans and a black muscle tee. He sat on their bed, feeling their presence as he sat there. Dead souls. Sometimes he used to think he felt something soft and light brushing his arm like the feathers of angel wings. But it was just the wind blowing through the emptiness. Of course, who said that his parents really were dead? Wasn't there a chance that they had escaped the hunters and were now in hiding, just waiting for the right moment to retrieve him? Or perhaps they were in Mutant City, but had managed to avoid the horrors there. Who said that they were dead? From the stories he had heard from both his parents and the Professor, he knew that they had lived through almost certain death before. Why was it this time that they were really gone?  
  
*Scott....I mean Tyler. Call your team together to my office after dinner. We have a meeting.* Professor X's voice spoke into his head.  
  
Sighing, he rose. He hated it when the Professor accidentally called him Scott. The father he had left at the age of nine. He knew why it happened though. Professor Xavior had lost so many sons and daughters with this outbreak. His X-Men.   
  
Stepping out of the boathouse, he set off to look for the six members of his team, the most important team. The Neo X-Men, made entirely of descendents of those who had thought for Xavier so long ago. He hated being the leader, but he knew that it was in his legacy to lead. His dad would be proud of him. He wasn't even the oldest of the "returners", as they were called. Amit was. But Amit was no leader, even if his mother was one. He was too much like his father, wild and challenging of authority.   
  
Amit had dark skin, was short, and extremely muscular with wild black hair. Dressed in his usual garb of a flannel shirt, torn black, baggy jeans, and in extreme contrast to his main outfit a chain with a wooden, African charm at the end of it, he sat under a tree, smoking a cigarette, staring up at sun like it was going to come crashing on them at any minute.   
  
"Hey Amit," Tyler started to speak.  
  
" 'Sup fearless leader!" Amit said sarcastically.   
  
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, Xavier wants to meet with us after dinner."  
  
"Goddess damn it!" Amit sighed, "What could Chuck possibly want with us now?"  
  
"I don't know...I don't know..."   
  
"Why can't he fucking send another team out?"   
  
"What am I, psychic? I don't know! Just be there, okay?" Tyler sighed, knowing full well that Amit would be late. At eighteen, Amit was a rebel, and a fighter. His father was the same way, Xavier had said.  
  
"You are psychic!"  
  
"Not when it comes to fellow telepaths!"  
  
He made his way to the danger room, where sure enough, he found fourteen-year-old Alyce working on a one-on-one martial arts scenario, dressed in her karate robe, her blond hair flairing behind her, flying and facing her attacker. Well, today it was blond, but often times she'd die it a dark violet to remind herself of her mother.   
  
"Hey 'Lycee!" he called, "The professor wants to have a meeting with us after dinner!"   
  
"I'll be there," she called back, slashing at her holographic opponent with her kantana.  
  
He found Mike Drake, the youngest on the team, right were he knew the boy would be, lying in front of the TV playing video games. The twelve-year-old prankster Euro-Asian yelled at the screen as his fingers pushed buttons with skillful speed. His jeans were covered with mud and he wore a shirt that bore the slogan "Original Prankster".   
  
"Hit him! No! I said hit! Not punch! Not jump either! Comeon! I know I'm pressing the right button! Hit! Hit! Hit!"   
  
Tyler tried to keep from laughing. "Uh, Mike, just letting you know, the Prof. Wants to see us after dinner."  
  
"Not another meeting!" he whined.  
  
"Yeah, I know what you mean."  
  
"Wanta play two player?" Mike always acted like he drank a double mocha espresso with extra caff.   
"Er...um...no thanks, gotta go find the others."  
  
Using her heating powers to warm the air inside of her inflatable pillow enough so that when she sat on it, she hovered on her pillow above her bed, thirteen-year-old Hannah Wisdom sat in front of her laptop, which she was also hovered above her bed and was typing away at a fast-paced speed only stopping to brush a brown, curly lock out of her eye. She wore gray cargo capris and a black tank top, attempting, and succeeding in looking as precotious as her other team members.   
  
"Tyler, let me guess. Meeting with Prof. X, right?" she said knowingly.  
  
"Be there."  
  
"Will be."  
  
"Great. Now all I got to do is talk to Sabine."  
  
Hanna sighed, "Good luck."   
  
"Yeah, really, I'll need it."  
  
***  
  
Sabine Clairisse LeBeau sat on the roof of the mansion, eyes downcast and twirling the golden ring she wore on a chain as a necklace around her index finger. May nineteenth. The day she had run. Coppery curls blew in the wind, which also blew her black trench-coat around her, revealing the red tank-top with the white rose on it and dark denim jeans that she wore, as her red on black eyes flashed down to the other refugees below, all of them living in pain, but none of them knowing the pain compared to that which she felt on this day.   
  
_"Run Pet'te. Run an' don' look back!"  
  
"But Papa!"  
  
"Sabine, Sugah, this is your only chance."  
  
"Maman! I don't want to go! I want to stay with you!"_  
  
Tears filled her eyes. Looking down at the ring, shattered memories fell into place. Tales of once and long ago. Dying as soon as they came. She didn't want to tell herself sweet fantasies of how maman and papa had escaped the hunters and maman had absorbed them so that they would never hurt anyone, and then banished their every memory and thought and feeling from her mind. She didn't want to tell herself that after that, maman was flying papa over her to Westchester, New York and any moment now she'd see them hovering above the mansion like beautiful, pale, guardian angels coming to take her home to New Orleans where they would be a family again and she would meet her handsome prince who would be the thief of her heat at Mardi Gras, now that she was old enough to finally go, or so she thought. She knew exactly what he would be like, from the smooth, thick Cajun accent he would have, to the way he would bend over and kiss her hand like a true gentleman and whisper, "Bonjour ma belle femme." But she didn't like to tell herself such fantasies that could never be. Maman and Papa were either dead, or almost dead, and there would be no going back to New Orleans, or even Missippi (where her parents used to take her in the summer. In truth, all Sabine really remembered about it was steam boat rides down the river, visiting elegant plantations, and smelling magnolias, but she knew that she loved it) as a second choice. There would be no maman or papa angels flying down from the sky to rescue her or handsome Cajun princes. All that was real was the Neo X-Men, Tyler, Alyce, Amin, Mike, Hannah, Professor Xavier, the mansion, Westchester New York, the suffering of Mutant kind, the hunters, and mutant city.   
  
A lot of the members of the other teams called her depressed, and said that she took her parent's death way too hard. She knew that they didn't understand. Most of the members of the other teams were Hannah's age at the oldest, thirteen, and had been dropped off at the mansion at birth, by parents who knew it was too late for them. The Mutant Tracking act had ordered a computer-tracking chip implanted in the arm of all living mutants. Mutant parents with newborns sometimes left their child to be cared for by Xavier, knowing full well that they could never be fulfilling parents as long as they could be tracked by the chip. Those other kids who had been given up so that they may live never had a choice of their destiny, and they didn't even know their parents. Sabine had been given the choice, and she chose to run. No matter how many times people had told her that it wasn't her fault, and that her parents had told her to run, that she didn't have the choice, there was something in the depths of Sabine's mind that told her somehow she could have stayed and protected them.  
  
Sabine had gone to get the chip implant when she was five-years old, and remembered little of it except for that her maman had told her that they were all going to get something matching in their arm so that they would always be connected. She stared down at the pale pink scar on her wrist. Intersecting it was the scar from when she had cut it out. Due to the mutant genes from both sides of the family, her power had started to show at the age of eight, the power to "pull" any object she saw a picture of into real life. When she had first discovered it, her parents had taken extra precations to hide any pictures with candy on them, as they would soon be out of the picture and in Sabine's stomach. But the power proved useful for other reasons besides midnight snacks. When Sabine had run, she had to find a way to remove her chip. Finding an advertisement for a shaving razor, it had taken all her consentrate it to move it out of the ad and into her had, and then even longer to get the courage to plunge the blade into her tiny wrist and remove the dreaded chip. It had hurt. It had healed. Now all that was left of it was another pink scar that crossed over the one that had been left when they put it in. They made a pink X on her pale right wrist.   
  
"Sabine!" a voice called her name.  
  
"Merde," she muttered, "Tyler." The very last person she had wanted to see.   
  
"Sabine! We've got a meeting with the professor after dinner."  
  
"Ah'm not coming." She didn't even look up as the sun slowly began to set.  
  
"Sabine!" obvious disapproval shone in Tyler's voice, "You have to come! What about your responsibility! You're my..."  
  
"Ah know, Ah know, damnent, Tyler, Ah know! Ah'm the second in command of the Neo-X-Men. Ah have a great responsibility. Should anthin' happen to ya, it is mah job to continue the mission without failing the team. Ah can't afford to put personal fears, or needs in da way!" she recited the lecture Tyler had given her all too many times before.   
  
"If you know it so well, then why don't you ever follow it?"  
  
She stood up, whirled around and faced him, glaring. "Do yah have any idea what day it is?"  
  
"Yes, Sabine, I know it's the anniversary of your running away, but it's no excuse!"  
  
Sabine turned away furiously.  
  
"Sabine, I'm really sorry about your parents. I lost mine too. My parents fought for the cause for a very long time. My parents lived here, fought for the cause, and it is my duty to continue their legacy. Do you think I want to lead? I've made so many sacrifices in their names. I just have to remember that they died fighting for the cause."  
  
She didn't even turn to look at him, but spoke, the wind carrying away a lot of her voice. "So did mine, Tyler. So did mine. They lived here, and they worked her, and they faced daily tidings of death just like your parents. Don't even pretend yah suffer more than Ah do."  
  
"I'm not pretending anything, Sabs, but please, you can't spend your life up here on the roof watching time go by. You've got to let go. You've got to heal."  
  
"Yah're one to talk, Mr. Sit-in-mah-parent's-boat-house-and-sulk! Don' pretend you don't 'ave to learn to let go."  
  
"I never said I didn't, but I try to keep my problems separate from my duty. Your problems are brought up in whatever you do."  
  
"Shut up! Leave me alone!" Sabine sat down and buried her head in her hands so that Tyler wouldn't see her cry.   
  
"Bye, Sabs, see you at dinner," Tyler said gently, "or at least at the meeting. You'll be there, right?"  
  
"Sure. Ah'll be there." Her voice was so faint Tyler could barely hear it. He turned to walk away, much to her relief. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around.   
  
"Oh! And Sabs!"  
  
"Yah."  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
***  
  
Before dinner, Hannah lit a candle, and then she lit another one. Neir shell zicaron. Looking up at the now dim sky, she whispered the mourner's kaddish.  
  
_Yisgadal v'yiskadash sh'mei rabbaw  
B'allmaw dee v'raw chir'usei  
v'yamlich malchusei,b'chayeichon, uv'yomeichon,  
uv'chayei d'chol beis yisroel,  
ba'agawlaw u'vizman kawriv, v'imru: Amein.  
Y'hei sh'mei rabbaw m'vawrach l'allam u'l'allmei allmayaw  
Yis'bawrach, v'yishtabach, v'yispaw'ar, v'yisromam, v'yis'nasei,  
v'yis'hadar, v'yis'aleh, v'yis'halawl sh'mei d'kudshaw b'rich hu  
L'aylaw min kol birchawsaw v'shirawsaw,  
tush'b'chawsaw v'nechemawsaw, da'ami'rawn b'all'maw, v'imru: Amein  
Y'hei shlawmaw rabbaw min sh'mayaw,v'chayim  
awleinu v'al kol yisroel, v'imru: Amein  
Oseh shawlom bim'ro'mawv, hu ya'aseh shawlom,  
awleinu v'al kol yisroel v'imru: Amein  
_   
Her tears fell on the candle flames and she wished more than anything that she could stop thinking about it. The traditional thirty days of mourning had come and went five years ago. However, she could still not let go. Since there were no synagogues she could seek refuge to, she lit a memorial candle and recited the mourner's kaddish every night, in the same manner her mother, Katherine "Kitty" Wisdom, had whispered it when her father, Peter Wisdom, had been taken. His history in the British intelligence had done the opposite of what had been thought: it had made him easier to catch, considering that he had an entire file that the government could access. So Kitty had mournfully whispered the mourner's kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the dead and bereaved, and now Hannah said it for both of them.   
  
Then, she got up and walked to dinner.   
  
***  
  
The six sat around their table in silence as crab cakes over salad was served, and glasses of coke were poured.   
  
Alyce finally broke the silence, "What do you suppose the professor wants us for? Another mission?"  
  
"I sure hope not! We just went out!" Hannah said.  
  
"He always sends us out! Damnit! You'd think we're the only team 'round here," Amit chimed in.   
  
"That's because we're the strongest and the best," Tyler said in Xavier's defense.  
  
"Not this again!" Alyce sighed.  
  
"Michael Drake! Put the Tabasco down!" Hannah cried as Mike rushed back to his seat in a flash, pretending he had never tried to poor it into Hannah's drink.   
  
"I wasn't doing anything."  
  
"Sure you weren't," Alyce laughed, "When aren't you doing something?"  
  
"Hey, Sabs, what's eatn' ya?" Amit asked. He had a soft spot for the tough girl, and treated her as he would a little sister, despite the fact that she wasn't that much younger than he.   
  
"And what aren't you eating?" Hannah pointed at the untouched plate.  
  
"Ah'm not hungry," Sabine spoke up for the first time during dinner.  
  
"Oh Sabs, don't be silly! They're good!" Alyce said, speaking of the crab cakes, "And spicy too. You'd love 'em!"  
  
"Sabs, you've got to eat something!" Tyler cried, "think of your health!"  
  
"Non! Ah'm not hungry!"  
  
Amit gave her a serious look. He had noticed the barely eaten breakfast and the single bite of sandwich for lunch. "Sabs, you're eatn' dat or I'm shoven' it down your throat!"  
  
"Ya wouldn't dare!"  
  
"Like hell I wouldn't!"   
  
Tyler simply smiled and used his telekinetic power to move the crab cakes up off her plate. Sabine closed her mouth in stubborn pride, but it was no match for psychic powers.  
  
"Through the teeth and past the gums look out stomach, here it comes!" Mike grinned as Tyler used his power to force Sabine to chew and swallow.   
  
"Ah don't believe you're making me do this!" she muttered.  
  
"Now Sabine, it's rude to talk with your mouth full," Tyler laughed.   
  
"I thought you were a real Southern Belle!" Hannah laughingly chimed in.  
  
"A perfectly-mannered lady!" Alyce giggled.  
  
"Actually, these are pretty good," Sabine admitted reluctantly between swallows. She was eating by herself at this point, and actually laughing along with her friend's jokes. It was the first time she had smiled all day.   
  
The others were relieved, but Amit and Tyler still looked at her with worry.  
  
"Sabine. You can't afford to starve yourself. Anorexia isn't any picnic. Think of your team! Your responsibility! What would we do without you if you were to get sick!" Tyler blurted out almost subconsciously.  
  
"No, Sabs, don't starve yourself, not 'cause we'll all be upset if ya hurt yourself. Don't do it because you'll be really upset if ya hurt yourself. If ya do hurt yourself, you'll feel like ya made the biggest mistake of your life." Amit said, glaring all the while at Tyler who seemed to shrink under his glare. Tyler sighed. Amit had just said exactly what he had meant to say...it just had come out...completely, and utterly wrong.  
  
"Thanks Amit," Sabine said, also glaring at Tyler, "Ah'll remember that."  
  
Ice cream sundaes were served, which everyone ate with gusto, including Sabine, much to everyone's relief. When dishes were cleared, the six Neo-X-Men made their way to Professor Xavier's office.  
  
Waiting outside the office was always a tension-filled moment for them, as they knew what awaited them inside. No matter how many times they had seen it, they were always shocked at the disquieting display of their leader. When they went in for the interview sessions, which he made them do periodically, it felt strange, and a little frightening to be in with the professor alone.   
  
Telepathically, the door opened, and the six stepped in.  
  
"Sit down, all of you, and thank you for coming." The voice boomed from all around. They sat in the semi-circle of chairs that had been set up for them. In front of the semi-circle, a computer monitor lowered itself with the head of an elderly, bald man appearing on the screen.   
  
"Hello my children," the face on the monitor spoke.  
  
"Hello professor," they said in unison. The man whom their parents had known was now merely machine. When it seemed that he was dying, Professor Charles Xavier with help of a former X-Man named Hank McCoy, may his memory live on, develop a way to save himself. His memories, personality, thoughts, and power were downloaded onto software making him a living computer program. It never failed to awe the students when the electronic eyes that were placed around the study crept over and examined them, or an object in the room moved due to telekinesis. Professor X had become, frightening, yet still respected and perhaps even admired by his students.  
  
"Are we all here?" he asked, "First in command, Tyler Grey-Summers, aka Telepath."  
  
"Here sir."   
  
"Seccond in command, Sabine LeBeau, aka Hera."  
  
"ici."  
  
"Amit, aka Sparx."  
  
"I'm here, Chuck."  
  
"Hannah Wisdom, aka PyroKat."  
  
"Right here."  
  
"Alyce Worthington, aka Shugotenshi."  
  
"Here."  
  
"Michael Drake, aka Fire Cracker."  
  
"Ready steady."  
  
"Excellent. I've called you all here today because I have a new mission for you all." His explaination was met with groans all around.  
  
"But Suh, we just got back," Sabine sighed.  
  
"Can't ya let another damn team take this one?" Amit nearly yelled.  
  
"No, I'm afraid not. It seems that there has been an increased amount of hunter activity near the old thieves' guild headquarters. I want you to get a look at it."  
  
"Yah don't mean the one in N'awlins, do ya?" Sabine sounded hopeful.  
  
"Yes, the one your father was the head of years ago, but Sabine, I want you to focus. I was struggling with the decision to leave you home for this one. No visiting your old home. No straying from the group. No picking up any more mementoes than is necessary. We don't know what sorts of tricks they might have."  
  
"But suh..."  
  
"No buts, Sabine. Stick to the mission."  
  
"Alright Suh."  
  
"And I mean it, Sabine," the professor turned to Tyler, "I'm holding you personally responsible for making sure Sabine stays focused."  
  
"What the..." Sabine muttered the rest in muddled French cussing that was truly incomprehensible.  
  
"Ya trust Sabs here to be the second in command and then ya but her under surveillance," Amit spoke up.  
  
"I'm just trying to make sure that everything runs smoothly. I don't want any accidents. This is a very dangerous mission. Anyway, you leave tomorrow at seven o'clock sharp. Be ready. This will be a very difficult job, but I have faith in you. Now go get some sleep, you have a big day tomorrow. Dismissed."  
  
He watched them all leave, the six of them. How he saw his X-Men in each of them! Tyler, the leader who took responsibility for everything and everyone, so much like his father it was hard not to call him Scott. He had a bit of his mother in there too, calm and sensible. Amit was the spitting image of Logan, but with a bit of Ororo's sense that shone through his gruff words. Oh and Hannah, computer wiz tough yet sensitive, with her precotious nature, he professor could just see a little Kitty Pryde move every time she did. Who could disagree that Mike had the fun-loving, joking, energetic ways of both Bobby and Jubilee? And then Alyce, with her polite ways, but obvious spirit, and facitiy for martial arts, there was a little Warren and a little Betsy in her too! Then there was Sabine. So much like both of them. Both of them were often very stubborn, and dark, sometimes having to deal with deep depression that Sabine let show through more than either of them did. Her craftiness, and temper, her mixed Cajun-Southern draw, she truly was a picture of both of them. Not to mention that each of them looked so much like their parents it was almost as if they were with him again, and everything was normal.   
  
Their powers even reminded him of them in some ways. Tyler's great psychic powers were not surprising, and Hannah's fire power could be attributed to her Father's "hot knives". Professor Xavier was almost certain that Amit's electric powers were directly decended from Ororo, and Mike's "fire works" definitely came from Jubilee. Alyce's super strength and Sabine's powers came seemingly out of nowhere, which was fairly common studies showed.   
  
It was hard for him sending these teams that were so young out on missions such as these, but it was hardest to send the Neo-X-Men out to battle. He felt as if he had Jean, Scott, Remy, Rogue, Logan, Ororo, Warren, Betsy, Jubilee, Bobbie, Peter, and Kitty all back again, and then was sending them off to die, and leave him again. All these kids had lost his parents, but he had lost his children. His adoptive children. His X-Men.   
  
***  
  
Mike read his comic books, sighing slightly as he flipped through the pages restlessly. Not another mission! It wasn't easy being the youngest of the Neo-X-Men. No one expected him to live up to anything, or do much of importance. He was just...the prankster. That's all he felt like. Not that he didn't mind being known for his sense of humor, but he was sick of trying to prove himself to the rest. Sick of being lil' Mike.   
  
Being little meant a lot of things. It meant that he knew his parents for the least amount of time...he had left when he was six. Didn't even remember how he got here. It also meant he wasn't as strong as the others, nor even had tiny glimpses of life before the Mutant Tracking Act. He had been two when it passed (young enough for his parents to know that it was best to hide him. The feds didn't even know he existed), and then three years after that, the hunters had come. No childhood. Many of the team was surprised that one who had to grow up so fast was able to laugh and joke like Mike. But Mike had a good reason for it. None of the other, older boys on the team cried. They didn't need to. Tyler could hide behind his leadership and responsibility. Amit hid behind his toughness, and strength. Mike, however, was too little to be very strong or intimidating, and he was no leader. So he hid behind his laughs. That was how he took the pain away. It was a little like drugs, except it didn't hurt him...except when his jokes got a little too out of hand. That was why he was a prankster. The jokes made him laugh. The laughter took away his emptiness.   
  
Alyce crept up behind him. The fourteen-year-old had always watched over him like a little brother.   
  
"Who knows, this mission could be fun!" she was trying to be optimistic.  
  
"Sure."  
  
"Think of it this way, we can watch Sabs and Tyler blow up at each other the entire time!"  
  
Mike giggled, shutting his comic book, and then moved closer to Alyce as she scooted next to him.   
  
" 'Lycee, do you remember your parents?"  
  
"Very little. My parents actually were some of the first to disappear. I was on the streets for a while before I came here."  
  
"What doya remember?"  
  
"Well, dad was an angel, and mom had violet hair. They were quite a pair."  
  
"That's why you dye your hair purple a lot?"  
  
"Well yeah...thought everyone knew that..."  
  
"Geez! No one tells me anything 'round here anymore!"   
Alyce hugged him. "That's because you're our little brother. Now ya better rest a bit. We've got yet another mission on our hands tomorrow. Bet ya anything that Amit's gonna drive Tyler nuts before five minutes is up!"   
  
Mike giggled, "That is, if I don't get to him first!"  
  
"Right. Night Mike."  
  
"Night 'Lycee!"  
  
She shut the door and turned out the light, decided to go on a moonlit walk to clear her head. Perhaps of all the Neo-X-Men, she was the best at hiding her fear and sorrow over the loss of her parents. Never-flinching, cool, and collected Alyce managed to keep a straight face through the tears. Somehow, by some blessed gift, she could keep it all in, unlike Sabine who didn't seem to have that talent.   
  
Sure, the memories haunted her: her mom clinging to her dad like a lost soul clings to her guardian angel, crying, and then scooping up Alyce, then eight, and putting her in the automatic transport. As it left, she had looked out the window at her parents. Then, a dark cloud appeared. Through the dark cloud, the men dressed in black came, through the bleak smoke. Then there were the weapons, metal gleaming in the sun. Papa angel had scooped mom up in his arms and tried to fly away, but hadn't gotten very far when the men shot a net out of the bands they wore on their arms.   
  
Young Alyce had buried her head in her hands, not wanting to look. The automatic transport had taken her out of the city, but then had run out of gas. That's when Alyce was really alone. Her dad had been her "Shugotenshi" which was Japanese for guardian angel. Often times, when she was little, she had walked around the house calling him "tenshi (angel)" instead of "dad". And she had worshiped her mother in ways that could not be described. Perhaps that's why when she got into her dorm that night, after pondering those thoughts, Alyce, the fourteen-year-old sixth child to return, went straight to her bathroom and took out a bottle of violet hair dye....  
  



	4. 

**

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Interview # 5654643453: Amit  


  
>Amit<** Hell this is stupid! I hate these. Look Chuck, what's the point?   
  
**

It's for the records. Future generations of freedom fighters will need to hear you speak. Both for reference and inspiration.

  
  
>Amit<** Sure. Don't think they'll find me too inspiring. Any case, you want to know a bit about me first of all. Not much to tell. I've got a mom, a dad...well at least I had 'em. Don't quite got 'em anymore, know what I mean. Thinkn' 'bout it, I probably do still have a dad, but who knows what perverted junk the damn hunters have done to him? They were legends 'round here, so I've heard. Wolverine and Storm. I know 'em better as Logan and Ororo, or as they called each other, Lo' and Ro'. They never did marry, ya know. They're not the type. Lived together and loved each other sans the wedding band. No need for dumb ass formalities. Mom told me to come here if anything happened, and I did. Plain and simple.   
I think mom always knew that she wouldn't see me through it all. She hoped she would, don' get me wrong. She's just too realistic to actually believe it. I think that's why I could move on so quickly: none of us deluded ourselves into thinking we'd live a perfect happy family life. Ya prob'ly think I'm insensitive talking about them so mattafactly, but hell, who are ya ta critisize. At least I'm not trying to starve myself over it like Sabine.  
  
**

She's as stubborn as her mother. She'll get over it. It's not the first time she's tried. Now continue on.

  
  
>Amit<** Yeah, she's always been one hell of a stubborn chick. Anyway, so ya want to know how I got rid of my chip. Well it was pretty simple. My power, you see, is that I can take electricity from things and use it at my own will, and considering how much is electric powered these days it wasn't that hard to find enough 'lectricity to disable the damn thing. Wish I could say I did something brave and macho, like dad would've, but I didn't. I survived how it fit me best, and that was to disable. 'sides, I don't think the blood scent on me would have done very well when the hunters sent their damn hounds afta me...is this too much for the little tykes?  
  
**

It's fine. Continue. You say there were hounds, Amit?

  
  
>Amit<** Yeah, made the mistake of getting too close and the bastards recognized me and I had to avoid their little bitchn' hounds for a few days. Not too bad. They bled a hell of a lot more than I ever did. Sometimes, when they got too close, I had to bash their heads, rough 'em up a little. Mom always said fighting wasn't the answer. Dad disagreed. Kinda funny really. Mom an' dad. Day and night. Pretty funny. Fuck! Why am I even doing this? Who's reading the transcript or listening to these interviews anyway?  
  
**

It's for the record.

  
  
>Amit<** Someday I'm gonna find out what ya really do with these damn things. So now you wanna know about my feelings of being the oldest known male mutant out of captivity. Eighteen ain't that old ya know. Wait...Chuck wouldn't ya be the oldest.  
  
**

I don't think I count due to my present state.

  
  
>Amit<** 'Kay, so the memories, powers, and personality in a computer don't count. Well, damn, I don't know what I think about it. I'm alive. I live each day. Nothing to say about it. Now turn that damn recorder off before I disable it! I'm sick of this shit!   
  
****


	5. 

Author's note- Here's chapter two, when things start getting interesting! Please review this peeps! Yes, I haven't forgotten about T.F.O., I promise. Oh yeah, next time I update either story, expect me to post up the URL of some fanfic art I've been drawing for both of these stories ^_^ Anyway, until then, enjoy!  
  


>TWO: Riddle Song<

  
  
The men wore loose-fitting black uniforms with the menacing silver knife-logo on their chests that identified their dark position. They had headphones embedded into their ears, and their gun holsters sewn into their uniform for easier access. A metal belt ran diagonally from their shoulder to their hips, serving no purpose but show. To top off their expressionless faces were dark, black sunglasses whose lenses changed from night vision, magnification, heat vision, dim light, normal light, and bright light settings with the push of a button on the arms of the glasses, for them to aid their vision for any sort of light. Even humans had a hard time not trembling when they looked upon them. These men were known only as the hunters. The mutants were their prey.  
  
They marched through the door, cold and menacing, as if robot guards and not feeling flesh and blood. The office of the guild, old fashioned with its lack of computers and many files which were mostly empty anyway, considering it was the typical guild procedure to burn any letters of correspondence. As if a mockery to any who dared to do the ironic deed of breaking into thieves guild headquarters, which had long since been abandoned and left to the dust for another headquarters (This headquarters had only served as a meeting spot for a brief time in the twentieth century), all that lay in the file cabinets were scattered ashes. However, it was doubtful anyone would guess the mansion to be the headquarters of any guild, especially not a guild of thieves. The walls were covered with portraits, long since faded, and there were trinkets of wealth wherever one looked, beautiful to behold, however cracked and chipped. It was sure that the mansion hadn't been lived in for the longest time for reasons not even Sabine, whose history was most closely connected with the guild, could not guess.  
  
The six Neo-X-Men sat cramped in the ventilation duct, with Hannah and Sabine keeping watch through two separate vents each with a pair of special binoculars. They were just above what appeared to be a living room, which adjoined the office in question. With the desperate times, they could no longer afford to wear bright, exciting costumes as their parents had. Instead, they wore suits of black with an olive green X logo on the right side of the chest. To spice up the otherwise simple costumes, the girls had busted out the scissors and needles, ending up with flared pants, Sabine with a crop top, Alyce with a tank top that had a small slit up the front, baring her midriff, and Hannah with a halter. The boys simply left their costumes plain, not caring about the plainness. Yet there were positives to having such a dull costume. The black and green allowed them to blend in with the shadows. In addition, stuck with special, removable adhesive behind their ears was a small device which acted as a data recorder, and communicator.   
  
"What's the story, girls?" Tyler asked.  
  
"Nada here. I can't get a good enough view of the office!" Hannah sighed.  
  
"Rien. Nothing. Ah can't get a good view eitha. We oughta move closer."  
  
"Why are we sittn' 'round then?" Amit asked, crawling a little further along the massive pipe ways.   
  
"No, wait a bit. I want to check and see if they brought their hounds with them. If they do, we can't afford to get too close. Sabine, you know more about guild history than the rest of us. Do you have any idea what they could be looking for?"  
  
"Well, most of what Ah know is all exaggerated bravado, but Ah have a good idea what they're looking for. Dey won't find anything," Sabine spoke up.   
  
"What do you think they're looking for," Mike asked.  
  
"Prob'ly some sort of records. The t'ing is though, the guild burned ev'ry piece of paper they eva used. If dere's anything in dere, it's pieces of ash and chared paper."  
  
"Hmmm...that doesn't make very much sense," Alyce said, "Are they carrying anything?"  
  
Hannah, who had the better view, leaned in closer to the vent to see with more facility, "I can't tell. Here, I'll max the magnification to 200%. There. Nope, I still can't see. Sorry."  
  
"Tyler, we've got no choice. We betta go down dere for a betta look. Hounds or no hounds. We'll never complete our mission sittn' around." Sabine said.  
  
Amit agreed, "Sabs' right. All this sneakn' around up here is wasting time."  
  
"But..." Tyler began to protest, but it was too late. The others had already began to pull the cover off the vent. Sabine had concentrated on the curtain cord, and "pulled" it into her grasp. Hannah heated up a spot in the metal and welded the end of the chord into the duct, for stability purposes.   
  
"Do ya think it'll be strong enough?" Sabine asked.  
  
Amit fingered the rope gently, "It's pretty thick. Not great, but it's a short way down." The others nodded in approval.   
  
Alyce, being the strongest on the team due to her powers, lowered herself down first behind an easy chair. She landed with ballet-like grace and then reached out to help down Amit. They both reached a hand for Tyler, who refused to use the chord and lowered himself down telepathically, still in stubborn disagreement with the plan. Sabine followed, lowering herself into Amit's arms as he set her down on the floor. Hannah did the same, and so did Mike. Soon the entire time crouched behind the old, beat-up faded scarlet easy chair. Finally relenting for the sake of covering their tracks, Tyler telepathically removed the chord from it's now cooled metal hold and replaced it around the curtain.   
  
"Right. Now let's make the best of this. Sabine, you head toward the left with Hannah and Amit, and I'll take Alyce and Mike to the right."  
  
"Oui. Ah gotcha Tyler. Dat looks to be our best bet!"  
  
They split up, moving cautiously now, slinking toward the office with cat-like stealth. That's when the riddles began.  
  
Sabine's team made it into the office first, ducking under a desk.   
  
"Oh my god...the hounds," Hannah looked terrified as she stared at the raging, foaming canine-like creatures running around. Sabine didn't blame her for her fear. Even after being trained to deal with hound attacks for the past six years of her life, every time she saw one filled her with dread. The ferocious beasts had showed up in the nightmares of all of the residents of Xavier's Mansion from time to time. Although they were commonly referred to as hounds, the creatures themselves were nothing like the hunting dogs the name typically referred to.   
  
Fur covered in some sort of gel which made ever hair razor sharp to the touch. The teeth were metal coated, and dagger sharp; enough to daunt the bravest of heroes. From puppies, the creatures had been injected with hormones and steroids that gave them extra muscle, and more aggressiveness. They were man-made mutants so to speak. Caninus Superior.   
  
"S'alright, darlin', the sons of bitches haven't noticed us yet. They're sniffn' at something though." Amit said.  
  
"Oui, looks to be a trap door of some sorts. Ah wish Ah knew Prowl-Gab so Ah could see what their sayn'." Sabine sighed. Hunters were forbidden to speak any human language while on the hunt. Someone, whoever their leader may be, had invented a new form of language: Prowl-Gab. It was partially spoken, and partially transmitted via computer through their special visors. The only other language known to man that it seemed to resemble was an ancient computer programming language from the twentieth century known as C++. Hannah had tried to decipher it many times, with no luck. The only one who was any help with the language was Tyler, who could pick up some of the phrases by reading their minds. Despite the efforts of whoever led the hunters, he could not force them to stop thinking in English.   
  
Sabine pressed the button on the device behind her ear, and a pair of headphones with a microphone attached silently arranged itself, fitting snuggly on her head.  
  
"This is Hera paging Telepath. Ah repeat. This is second in command Hera, paging first in command Telepath. Do ya copy?" she whispered.  
  
"Hear you loud and clear, Sabs. I told you there'd be hounds."  
  
"Don' be so smug fearless leader! Listen. Ah think they're speakn' Prowl. Can ya hear any of it?"  
  
"Not too much, I'm afraid. They're too busy concentrating on how to open the door. Seems they think there's someone in there. Someone who they've been looking for a while. Someone they want to destroy."  
  
"Mon Dieu! Do ya t'ink it could be a mutant?"  
  
"No...something about a friend of the scum...that probably means someone who helps us mutants."  
  
"Oh." For a half second there had been a silent prayer in her head that perhaps her parents could have been hiding here all along.  
  
"Anyt'ing else? Names?"   
  
"Sorry. Nothing else. We'll just have to wait and see what happens when they break through...that is...if they break through."  
  
"Merde! Ah hadn' thought of dat! If dey can't break through, the hounds'll surely catch our scent on de way out! Den we're in for it!"  
  
"We'll have to make a dash for it," Amit whispered, "But I've dealt with the flamn' bastards before and I can hold 'em off."  
  
They all watched in silence for a time, until the metal trap door under the desk suddenly gave way. The hounds leapt in, pouncing on whatever innocent victim may be in there. A real, human scream sounded - the most human noise any of the Neo-X-Men had heard in a while. Then another sound, high-pitched and alien echoed, drowning out the man's scream. It made their blood run cold as they heard the hunting cry. The high-pitched, shrill wail of doom. The sound the hounds emitted only right before they lunged in for the kill. Alyce grabbed Mike's hand so tight he jolted up with its squeeze. She had been attacked by hounds many times on the streets, and had even heard them warn her with the death call. If Tyler, Amit and Sabine hadn't been there, on a training mission, she might not have been sitting there, grasping the hand of her team mate.   
  
"Ruoewhrwour {24324 +0};" one of the hunters yelled in Prowl. He was taller than the others, with muscles so huge they could only have been made through use of drugs. He seemed to be the leader of this mission.   
  
"He's telling the hounds not to kill whoever's in there." Tyler's voice was barely audible. It was a shocking idea. Never before had the hunters been known to stop a kill.  
  
By the back of his collar, a man, not ancient, but beat up was dragged out. He looked beat up and ill, as if he had lived in the trap door for a long time. The hounds pulled him in front of the tall man, and then dropped him to the floor, but still surrounding the man, growling, as if warning him not to even bother running.  
  
"What...what are they doing to him?" Mike asked.   
  
"I don't know," Alyce whispered.  
  
The tall man stared menacingly at the captive through his visor and grinned like a sadist about to kill.   
  
"Monsieur Emil. We have been looking for you for quite some time now," the tall man spoke.  
  
The six looked at each other in surprise. In the numerous missions they had been on in the past, they had never heard a hunter speak anything but Prowl-Gab.  
  
"Don' t'ink ya'll get anyt'ing out of me," the man now identified as Emil spoke.  
  
"Emil!" Sabine whispered suddenly. The name jerked a memory she had locked in the back of her brain long ago. "No!"  
  
"Do you know him?" Tyler asked. Sabine would not answer.  
  
The six, at this point, were powerless. They could not attack outright, that would give the hunters a chance to learn something about them, which would be the downfall of the entire cause. There was nothing they could do, but watch in horror at what was to come.  
  
"I'll see about that. I suppose you know why we've been looking for you," the man's grin had the charm of a crocodile's leer, "Sources have said that you were responsible for the hiding of a certain Remy LeBeau and his family. Does the name ring a bell?"  
  
"Mais non! Neva heard o' him."  
  
Amit turned to look at Sabine who was hiding her eyes.  
  
"And the name Sabine Clairisse LeBeau means nothing to you?"  
  
"Non." It was obvious from his tone of voice that Emil knew not a soul in the room believed his lies.  
  
Sabine felt all eyes on her now.  
  
"No use lying. The Remy and his wife, a certain Rogue Darkholme, were taken May 21st, 2019. However, there are no records of the daughter ever being retrieved. We have reason to believe, Monsieur Emil, that you have something to do with her disappearance."  
  
"Now dat I can tell ya true," Emil grinned like a maniac, "I had not a t'ing to do with her leavn'. She went to a place dat's as cold as the snow, warm as the sun. A sanctuary to some, a detention to others."  
  
"You're speaking riddles!" The tall man screamed. The growling hounds moved menacingly close to Emil who was still smiling in a lunatic manner.   
  
"So I be, homme!"  
  
"Tell me! Tell me where she is!"  
  
"I told you!"  
  
"Monsieur Emil, I have ways of persuading people like you," the tall man took a syringe out of a holster on his metal belt.  
  
"Truth serum!" whispered Mike, recognizing the awful, purplish chemical inside.  
  
"I'd die first, mon ami!" Emil laughed manically, and pulled a tiny revolver out of the front pocket of his pants. The hounds rushed at him, trying to grab the gun away in their steel jaws.  
  
Emil simply grinned, "Start searching. You'll never find her!" He laughed. There was a tiny explosion. The laughter stopped. And it was over. Sabine stared in silence.  
  
"Fuck!" the tall man yelled. Several of the hounds were now sniffing the body, possibly preparing to devour it. Suddenly, one sniffed the air and began to bark. The others did the same.  
  
"Damn! They smell us!" Amit growled.  
  
"q3orhqwktjhnakl {23423} ahfaskhf {IF: aldjalf THEN: qlkfjaljflasjkf};" one of the hunters spoke.  
  
The hounds rushed to the desk, sounding their war cries like the wail of a police siren in the night. They jumped out from under the desk, knowing that it was no use trying to keep their cover. Looking toward the door, they quickly noticed they were surrounded by the menacing dogs. Tyler, Alyce, and Mike, who had ducked behind a bookcase, were too blocked in. Their only way out was to fight.  
  
"23q59035903;!" ordered the tall man. No translation was needed. The menacing, monstrous fury in his voice made his words very clear. Kill them.  
  
Looking around the room, Sabine quickly spied a portrait of a man holding a jeweled dagger. Quickly, she "pulled" it out of the painting and into her hand.   
  
"En Guarde!" she yelled, waving it like a fencing foil (sword). Swinging it this way and that, she flung it at the raging dogs.  
  
"Sparx!" Tyler cried, "They're going to get data with their visors!" If there was one danger greater than death on these missions, it was for the hunters to get information about them. That would not only mean the death of a member, but the discovery of the mansion and the death of every team in it. That was why in battle the mutants were referred to only by their code names.   
  
"I got it!" Amit yelled, taking the electricity from his communicator and using it to scramble any and all files in the hunters' visors rendering them temporarily blinded and erasing any data. They cried out in Prowl-Gab, presumably cussing, and cursing the mutant teens.   
  
"Let's burn our way outa here!" Hannah cried. Where she gestured, a raging flame shot forward burning all monstrous, attacking hounds in its path.  
  
"Great job, PyroKat!" Mike called in approval, throwing sparks at the stubborn beasts who still leapt on.  
  
"To the Blackbird!" Tyler called as the others ran after him. Alyce rammed into the locked front door, breaking it down. It seemed that both the Neo-X-Men and the hunters had snuck in trying to be unnoticed.  
  
They turned into the alley ways and walked up to their concealed air craft. They were on their way home.  
  
***  
  
Sabine sat on the roof again, watching the sunset. There was just something comforting about the roof. Usually, she was quite afraid of heights, but the roof of the mansion was different. Up there, the air was cool, and clear so that she could think. The world seemed to be her own domain, and she felt in control. She'd come up there whenever she couldn't sleep, and always on the saddest day of the year: the day she ran. She usually wasn't as depressed as she had been the previous day, but there was something about the saddest day that brought out the worst daemons in her. Now, Emil was dead. She remembered little of him, only that he was funny and would tell her jokes and play with her.   
  
"Sabs!" Tyler's voice sounded.  
  
"Merde! Tyler! Can't a gal get a lil' time to herself?"  
  
"Sorry Sabs. Hey listen, we better go give our report to Xavier."  
  
"Yah, guess you're right."  
  
"Hey, um, if it doesn't hurt too much. Who was Emil?"  
  
Sabine looked downcast. "He was mon pere's cousin. Maman, papa et moi, we were some of de first to get de chip in our arms 'cause Dey knew the first batches would be flawed. Dey ran through radio waves, making it easy for dere to be interfearence. When the news of disappearances first started, Emil offered to hide mah family and Ah. He was our keeper. We hid in a compartment behind a red cupboard in his kitchen. Funny, Ah remember mah early chile'hood a lot betta than the red cupboard days."  
  
"Oh." Tyler sighed. Sabine was usually the most depressed on the anniversary of her running away, but now, perhaps she would not recover as usual with this new death in her life.  
  
"It's s'alright. Ah mean, Ah thought he was already dead. It's like he died twice. Anyone who dares hide mutants don't live long."  
  
"Yeah, some price to pay for doing the right thing." The two sat on the roof top in silence.  
  
"Ah guess we betta go find the others so we can give our report."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Tyler, why do ya think dey were afta me?"  
  
"Sabs, I don't think you were the main target. I think it was all of us."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"Well...I...mean...I can hear their thoughts. There's nothing more frightening, the thoughts of those murderers. Anyway, they were thinking. Thinking something that came out: children of the X for the plan. Whatever that might be. I can read most people's minds, but theirs! I mean, it's so awful, I try to block them out! They try to block me out! I can only read so little!"  
  
"Ah guess dey know who our parents were."  
  
"Yeah, and now they want us for some plan. The prof's gonna want us to check this out."  
  
"Guess the team'll be going out more often."  
  
"Yeah. Guess so."  
  
The two walked down from the roof to find the others.   
  



	6. Interview- Hannah Wisdom

**>loading...please wait...<  
  
Interview # 23423546745: Hannah Wisdom  
  
>Hannah<** I guess I've been avoiding these for a while. Knew you'd catch me one of these days. So I'll start from the beginning. Mom: Katherine Pryde. Dad: Pete Wisdom. They got my dad when I was five. I really don't remember much about him. Tiny pictures that race across my mind time to time. People used to say they didn't understand why mom married Pete in the first place. Said he wasn't the marrying type. Oh well. Love is strange. Love means letting go. That's why mom let me go and come here. Or at least that's what I had to tell myself. You remember when I came here, I thought it was because mom didn't love me anymore, like I had made some kind of mistake. Then I saw the others and realized it wasn't me. Still sometimes....never mind. Anyway, the clearest picture I have was of him was of his death. Mom had grabbed me and she dragged me into a secret trap door dad had put in the wall. I remember sitting in mom's lap, clutching her so tight, I'm shocked I didn't strangle her. We heard it, the whole shebang. But when we came out, that is what was hard. At first, mom wouldn't let me come out and see the brutalized body, but I walked out anyway. Mom was hovering over him, still trying to kiss him...I think...maybe...I don't know. I could be off, I was five, you know. After that, mom watched over me like a hawk, afraid they'd take me too and then she'd be alone. Taught me everything she knew...computers...physics...the works. At seven, I was already taking apart and assembling computers. Maybe because mom loved me so much, is why it's so hard to let go.  
  
**

Hannah, you're supposed to be explaining how you got here

  
  
>Hannah<** Sorry. Sabine told me that you wanted to all the details. Well, I'm not quite sure. Obviously it took me a bit longer than the others. I was the fifth, just before Alyce. Mom had given me directions on my palm pilot, but I didn't really expect to get here. Thought I had lost my parents, I had lost their love. No one cared what happened to me anymore, so why should I care. I was constantly being chased, but I was too quick to be caught. Eventually, I used my palm pilot (which mom had programmed with lots of extra goodies) to transmit a computer virus into my chip. I'm glad I didn't have to cut it out like Sabine, could you imagine, taking a blade to your own wrist? I'm not squeamish, but I have a hard time being masochistic...not that I'm saying Sab's a masochist, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I was wandering through New York City one day, and then I saw three kids. Bullies. They were so much bigger than me...or at least it seemed that way at the time...they were probably only about fifteen, but I was eight then, so what do you expect? They threatened me...called me a mutant. I didn't realize at the time that bullies called all runaways mutants. I was so scared! But then, I heard a gruff voice behind me.  
  
"Don't mess with the girl, bub!" He wasn't very tall, but he was strong. His skin was of medium tone. I guess you know who it was. Amit. The boys laughed at him, calling him shrimp, but I tell you, they messed with the wrong mutant! Amit pulverized 'em! He took me here, knowing no better place for me. I was eight at the time, and it was the year after Amit, Sabine and Tyler had come. Mike had come back three months before, making me the fifth. Soon after, my mutant powers evolved, slowly at first. Even when I was little, I was bothered by the cold a little more than most. It sounds strange, I know, that the extra heat in my body allowed me to become colder easier, but it makes sense when you know your physics. It's just like you explained it to me, Professor X, my natural body temperature is one hundred two degrees Fahrenheit. Since heat travels automatically to anything colder to try and equalize the temperatures, and my heat is so much higher than the typical temperature on earth, I loose much more heat than most people. So I colder easier. But when I reached the mansion, you see, it all came quickly. I could concentrate how much heat I gave to the air around me, sometimes so much things lit on fire! And that's how I became PyroKat. End of story. Is that all you want to know? Because I could talk more if you....  
  
**

No...that will be fine.

  
  
>Interview Session Terminated<**


	7. A Day Off

Author's Note: I like this chapter. Sorry I haven't been able to update the Fifth Oracle. Damn writer's block won't let me figure out what's happening next chapter. Fortunately, I don't have a complete case, 'cause I'm getting plenty of ideas for this story. I've been really busy with school stuff lately so I may or may not be updating regularly. Plus considering the power problems California has been having, I don't know how much computer time I'll be having (or how many rolling black outs we'll be having). Oh yes, I've been very sad every day when I boot up my computer and log on to hotmail only to find my poor inbox empty. Humor me! Review me! Email me! Send me ideas, requests, your life story, your boyfriend problems! Pleaaase, I miss having a full inbox! >_<.   
  


>THREE: A Day Off<

  
  
  
_In the dark, cold, unforgiving red light, four figures sat huddled together behind a dumpster, having become slim shadows of their former selves. They gathered around a thin woman, her matted hair hanging limply around her weak body. A man with his hand on her shoulder fearfully glanced up at a small flame under glass, high up on a wall that was topped with many flames of the same kind. This flame danced and flickered weakly, as if pondering to end its struggle and burn out. A small plaque by this torch read #J2432223GS.   
  
"Don't squander what power you have left," he whispered gently though obvious fear echoed on his face.  
  
"I...couldn't reach him," the woman gasped, "he didn't want to be reached....he was too afraid...."  
  
"It's alright," the man whispered, "you tried."  
  
"How much flame do I have left?" the woman asked weak from her exertion and fear.  
  
"Not much, I'm afraid. Don't worry. I won't loose you."   
  
She grasped his hand, and leaned onto his shoulder. "I can feel it leaving me. If my power leaves me...then..."  
  
"Shh...I won't let them take you."  
  
She glimpsed back to the third person there, another man.   
  
"You...have...a bit of psychic powers, don't you?"  
  
"Very little," the man was looking down, sighing.  
  
"If...if...I were to help you...would you...could you....connect with one of them?"  
  
"Could try."  
  
The first man looked afraid, "We can't afford to loose either of you!"  
  
The woman stared back at them, "Our only chance is to connect."  
  
He sighed, "Do what you must."  
  
The third figure and the woman concentrated together, working onto the astral plane in tiny steps, due to the lack of their power flowing through their blood stream. Slowly, carefully....  
  
One connection was all they needed. One connection could save them.  
  
_ In a cold sweat, Sabine awoke, still shivering in her crimson colored sheets. A dream. That was all. There were no candle flames, no shadowy half-dead figures. It was all right. She was all right. There were no shattered memories...no more nightmares. She looked across the room at the clock. Six AM. On her day off! She cursed under her breath. She had been trying to get some sleep, but it seemed the world would not will it. Rolling onto her side, she suddenly felt a surge of pain run up her right arm. Gently, she lifted it, feeling a throbbing in her wrist. She looked wide-eyed at the scar, which had now become blood red, as if it had somehow become two crossed gashes. Her X scar.  
  
"Maybe Ah'm dreamn' dis too," she whispered, and rolled over, falling asleep again.   
  
_"Don' doubt your path, pet't. You've been given your sign, you're where you belong."  
  
"Papa!" Sabine was suddenly staring at a couple of angels with the visages of her parents. Or were they spirits. Wingless, clothed in torn brown cloaks, her fathers longish red hair clinging to the sides of his stubble-covered face with sweat, her mother's auburn and white-striped curls in disarray, hanging all over the place, longer than her body and drifting all over Sabine's room. Despite their state of disarray, they were beautiful.   
  
The scar on her arm flashed red and then pink, red and then pink, burning more and more with each flash stinging like a thousand needles.  
  
"Maman! Papa! Why does it hurt? Why does my path hurt?"  
  
"Sugah...we'll be at the otha side. When ya get to Xavier's, your poppa an' Ah will be there. Here, take this."  
  
"But Maman...dat's your wedding ring..." Sabine echoed the very words she had spoken when she spoke to her mother at the age of nine.  
  
The mother spirit did not seem to hear. "Take this and don't loose it. When you need me, look at it."   
  
Sabine subconsciously looked down at where the tiny gold band hang on its shinning golden chain around her neck, dangling just above her chest. When she looked up at where the two spirits were, she saw them fading away.  
  
"Papa! Papa! Don' leave me alone again! Papa! Maman! Maman! Please! I don't want to be alone any more! Maman! Don't let me be alone anymore! Don't leave me alone! Papa! Maman!"   
  
A dull, sharp pang hit her head and rushed throughout her body...  
  
"SABINE! SABINE!" A voice called.  
  
_ She opened her eyes. Suddenly, she realized she was no longer on her bed, but had tumbled down on to the scantily carpeted floor below.   
  
"Sabine! Are you alright?" Hannah, who had the dorm right next to her, looked in fear.  
  
"Ah had the dream again," she whispered.   
  
"What dream?"   
  
"Never mind! Go back to bed."  
  
"Are you sure you're alright?"  
  
"Outa mah room!" Sabine cried, nearly screaming in a mix of fear, furry, and sorrow. When Hannah left, she sat on her bed and cried. She didn't even think of going back to sleep.  
  
***  
  
The water washed around her like clean, fresh rain, and just about as cold. Hannah had little tolerance for cold. With the extra heat her body generated, allowing her to create the fire, which she wielded so proudly in battle, it was a lot easier to for her body temperature to drop, because most temperatures were cooler than normal body heat. Still, there was not enough hot water in the shower to heat the water up to the preferable hundred degrees, at least not enough for the duration of an entire shower.   
  
Sighing, she reached a pale hand up to the metal showerhead, heating it up a considerable amount. Better. Much better. She squeezed the bottle of vanilla-scented shower gel, squirting rainbow-tinted bubbles into the air. Laughing, she popped one of them, spreading the vanilla aroma everywhere.   
  
People often told her that she was like a bubble, a bubble of energy. She was always talking, be it on IM or in person, showing spirit. Unlike the other residents of the X-Mansion, it was not a matter of "if" they would ever defeat the hunters and start a new era of peace; it was "when". However, she wasn't always so happy. She missed her mother, and she felt bad about it. She missed her mother many more times than her father, simply because she had little memory of him, except that she had loved him. But her mother had held onto her like a prayer, and Hannah had become very attached to her mother. Too attached to let go. But in truth, she believed in the cause, and believed in its success. She believed in the Neo-X-Men. However, she knew she may not be a part of them for long. With the lack of older girls, a thirteen-year-old with the strength to lead with inspiration was valuable. Soon, she might become the leader of a new team, or an already existing team that mostly featured nine or ten year olds, like the newest one: Extreme.   
  
Truly, she did not want to leave the Neo-X-Men, especially not Amit who had become her mentor throughout the years.   
  
"Hannah, Sugah! Ah need some hot watah too, ya know!" Sabine, who shared a bathroom with Hannah, called.   
  
"Sorry Sabs! I'll be out in a jiff!"  
  
Shutting off the water, Hannah grabbed one of her fluffy blue towels and exited the bathroom, rushing quickly to her dorm to change.   
  
It was nine thirty - a full half hour before breakfast, which everyone was usually late for on the days after missions, but Hannah was never one to sleep in. She shivered uncontrollably as she removed the towel, although the temperature of her dorm was set constantly at a temperature that was comfortable to her cold-sensitive body. Slipping on a pair of sparkling flared jeans and a tight blue shirt the had "Famous" written in silver letters across the front, she heated up the air around her head, drying her hair quickly, and then started down the stairs to breakfast.  
  
Only she, Amit and Sabine were early risers, and they all sat together at their accustomed table for their team. Sabine wore a pair of tight, black jeans and a white tank top with a playing card in the center. The queen of hearts. Her long, freshly wetted curls were tied back in a pony tale.   
  
"Well if it isn't the flamn' cat herself," Amit commented as she walked over to them.  
  
"Funny. Good morning to ya too, Amit. Morning Sabs!"  
  
"Morn'." Sabine said, still not seeming to be quite awake, "Ah feel so silly bein' up so early on mah day off."  
  
"Join the club," Hannah said good-naturedly swinging around into the seat between Sabine and Amit.  
  
"What's the eats today?" Amit asked.  
  
"Think today's an oatmeal day," Hannah groaned.  
  
"Damn! We deserve pancakes for yesterday's work!" Amit scowled.  
  
"Ya said it, sugah," Sabine groaned.   
  
The bowls of mush topped with maple syrup and ripe strawberries were placed before them and they ate, secretly pleased. An entire day where there was nothing to do was heaven for the eldest group. Usually, they were training the younger X-teams, training themselves, or out on a mission. Today was theirs, all theirs. They relished the very idea. Their reward for finding more on the hunters than any other team in the past six years, all on one mission.  
  
Laughing, they clinked orange juice glasses in a toast, drinking down the fruity, pulpy liquid with relish. It was going to be a beautiful day.  
  
***  
  
Extreme was the youngest team of X-children. Led by a ten-year old girl Naryce, aka Mischief with a shape-shifting ability. There were four others on the team. Tamara, age nine, aka Tigress, who was born with black tiger stripes over her otherwise normal skin, in addition to some dark orange stripes on her otherwise blond hair, and had several tiger-ish qualities as well. Ten-year-old Quixel, aka Harlequin, was a boy with the power to create patterns with light, and attack with it if he desired. Finally, there were the nine-year-old twins, Muriel and Marx, aka Artemis and Apollo. Possessing perhaps the most unique power, the twins could merge together into one being they called Celestia that had twice the strength, speed, and intelligence of an average human.   
  
Despite their impressive powers, as a team they were quite weak. They had little strength and skill because they were new to their powers and lacked the experience of age. This is why Tyler was so surprised to see that team was out on a mission, especially since Tamara was still recovering from a broken leg acquired in the danger room. They were so little. Even worse, the mission was to scope out hunter activity on the George Washington bridge, long since abandoned as a trafic route, a well-known spot for hounds. Surely Professor Xavier would not trust such young children to go to such a dangerous place. There was even evidence to suggest that perhaps the GW bridge also served as a communication center with Mutant City. It couldn't be possible. It was a job for one of the older, more experienced teams like Neo-Excalibur, Neo-X-Factor, or even the Neo-X-Men themselves, but not Extreme.   
  
"Don't worry," he told himself, "the professor knows what he's doing."   
  
"Hey Tyler!" Alyce called, "We're looking to play soccer against Neo-Excalibur, ya up for it?"  
  
"Be there in a sec, Aly!"  
  
***  
  
"Hallo Sabine!" Viktor, the fifteen-year-old captain of Neo-Excalibur called in his typical German accent. He looked rather like a blue-skinned daemon, with a tail and all, featuring soft, extremely human, pale hazel eyes. In addition to his appearance, he had the power to make "fetches" or temporary clones of whatever he desired.  
  
"Bonjour!" Sabine said happily, coming over and giving him a friendly hug, much to Viktor's delight. Persyltha, a blond, short-haired girl the same age as Alyce (14) with the power to control all flora, eyed her suspiciously. Sabine looked back at her and shrugged simply, as if she had committed no wrong.   
  
Fugio, a tall, thirteen-year-old Japanese boy gifted with extreme speed, strength, and endurance, practiced bouncing the ball from knee to knee and hitting it up in the air, never missing a shot.  
  
"Hey Mike! Catch this!" he called, as Mike headed the ball so that it conveniently landed on twelve-year-old Sylvia's head. The Latin-American girl stared at him in mock horror. "¡quitate!" she screamed for them to stop. She looked at them menacingly with her silver eyes, only part of her mutation. She could turn herself into any form of matter she chose.   
  
Fourteen-year-old Ross giggled at her furry, only narrowly miss the soccer ball being chucked at him by a very annoyed Sylvia. He only missed due to his power of predicting the future, and thanked his lucky stars for it.  
  
"Can we just play already?" Lance, thirteen, called out, smoothing the porcupine quills over his back.  
  
"I'm ready!" Amit called from inside the goal, his massive stance making him a virtual wall. Sabine walked nearby, assuming her position as fullback next to Mike. There were not enough players for there to be half backs, so Tyler, Alyce and Hannah stepped to the line to play forward.   
  
As center, Tyler stood face to face with Viktor, the captains of the teams both conveniently center forwards. To his left stood Fugio and Sylvia to his right. Fullbacks were Lance and Ross with Persyltha in goal.   
  
Tyler kicked off as they passed to each other, rushing down the field. Hannah aimed for the goal, and missed. A mighty kick from Lance sent the ball flying down the field, Viktor now in control, Sabine charging at him, furiously kicking at the ball, but at times setting her hard boot against his shins. Finally, she made contact with the ball and passed it to Alyce who passed to Tyler, who was set up center for the goal.  
  
Hannah whooped a wild crazy victory cry and high-fived and hugged her teammates. Mike and Sabine rushed forward and greeted each of her teammates then rushed back into position for the kick off.   
  
Viktor kicked off to Fugio, who passed back to him. Viktor grinned deviously, and then instead of one there were two balls flying across the field.   
  
"Hey! No powers!" Mike cried, charging at what he hoped was the real ball.   
  
He ran into mere air, tripping in surprise when his feet made no contact. Viktor laughed as he slammed the real ball into the goal.   
  
"Damn you Viktor!" Amit growled.  
  
Despite the seemingly tense situation, there was no hatred or even animosity between the two teams. The "fights" were in good nature, and the spirit of friendship.   
  
Suddenly, a voice echoed in Tyler's head *Gather the team*.   
  
"Man! Guys, the professor wants to see us!"  
  
"Fuck! What now?" Amit growled.  
  
***  
  
The visage on the computer screen stared down on them once more.  
  
"Extreme was sent out to the GW Bridge and it seems they've encountered more than they can handle."  
  
"Standard rescue mission?" Tyler asked.  
  
"Yes. Hurry and god speed!"  
  
They rushed to the room where their black uniforms sat, lined up neatly in glass tubes. As they stepped in, a curtain dropped before them, and the team skillfully suited up before rushing to the blackbird. They hurried, for although it was a standard rescue mission, something in the air told them all that there was real danger. Perhaps it was because Extreme was so young. Or maybe it was something else...  
  
***  
  
"Mon Dieu!" Sabine whispered as they approached the scene. Tamara, whose leg was still weak from a recent breakage, stood in the center of a ring of hounds. Her team stood on the outside, attempting to attack the beasts, but their attempts were futile.   
  
"This is Telepath of Neo-X-Men paging Tigress! Do you copy?" Tyler spoke into his communicator. His response was a bunch of sobs.  
  
"Don't worry! We're coming for you! This is Shugotenshi of Neo-X-Men!" Alyce said soothingly. The Neos got in attack formation, surrounding the hounds. In their typical formation, the ring of hounds was farely easy to break through and get to Tamara. Hannah and Mike had burnt their way through, with Amit's sparks and Alyce's strength keeping them at bay.   
  
Suddenly, like a piercing cry, a gun shot rang out, as Naryce, the captain of Extreme staggered backward.   
  
"Narcie!" Muriel screamed, momentarily forgetting to address her teammates by their code names. The frightened girl separated from Celestio and rushed over to her leader.  
  
"Get Down!" Amit yelled at the frightened, in-experienced Extreme members.  
  
The children obediently dropped to the ground, army crawling closer to their elders for protection.  
  
Tyler near panicked when he looked around. There they were, the hunters, at least a hundred of them armed with guns and hounds surrounding them like grinning cats around a mousetrap. The six ducked under the ring of fire.   
  
"Amit! Is there anything you can do?" Hannah screamed, as a cold steal bullet wizzed past her face.   
  
Sabine shut her eyes, her chin and hands scratched by the rough pavement below. She felt so hopeless. And as in her dream, her scar began to throb. 


	8. Hologram Communication File #1

**>System override<  
>Transmission being shown...<  
>Radio signal #2342131424241111<  
>Project Hologram?<  
....  
>Project Hologram?<  
  
YES<  
  
>Downloading Data<  
  
>50% complete<  
>90% complete<  
>100% complete<  
  
>Hologram Image<** Charles, it's been a while.  
  
**

Erik!

  
>Erik<** Yes. Did you miss me Charles?  
  
**

What do you want?

  
  
>Erik<** Charles, I know what you're doing. Sending out children to do your dirty work now?  
  
**

They are working for the cause! For all of mutant kind!

  
  
>Erik<** Yes! Nine-year-old girls with limp legs make delightful lures for hounds, don't you agree, Charles?  
  
**

I don't understand.  


  
>Erik<** The lame dog trick, don't tell me you haven't heard of it. One acts as live bait, and the others watch and wait. Such a cruel trick, Charles. Sacrificing a mere child, barely knowing what she was doing...  
  
**

I did nothing of the kind!

  
  
>Erik<** But of course Charles! For you they are working for the good of all mutants, just the say my teams used to work for me! Sure I told them all it was for the good of mutant kind but in reality...  
  
**

How dare you accuse me! You have no business coming here and accusing me like this!  


  
  
>Erik<** I want you to stop this Charles! These children, they are too fragile...too scared...too young to know what they're signing their lives away to! They can barely control their powers!  
  
**

Since when do you care? I sent the team out to find some information about the hounds that's all! Nothing more! 

  
  
>Erik<** And you won't even liberate the captured will you? No! You'll just research and research and then have your children die in the process! You don't give a damn about any of them do you?   
  
**

You have no business accusing me of anything after all you've done! Leave me alone! You're ruining everything!

  
  
>Erik<** You've changed Charles. You used to be in this because you cared what happened to them.   
  
**

Leave me be!

  
  
>Transmission cut off<**


	9. Evolution

NOTE: Sorry it took a bit. Been very busy. Still not much inspiration for TFO >_< DIE STUPID WRITER's BLOCK! Anyway, I'm performing in the school musical tommorrow, so I technically should be asleep, but I decided to finish it just for you! Wish me luck! ^_^ This chapter is kinda grusome, but I like it. Hope you enjoy it. I finnally figured out the progression of events and if I can ever find time to write, I should be able to get there.  
  
**_IMPORTANT:_** I've changed the ending of chapter 3 because I was dissatisfied. Either go back and read it or just keep in mind that I have made it so that Sabine was fighting witht the others and NOT keeping watch. If you do not read this and this chapter does not make sense, it's your problem. Anyhoo, enjoy! -CG  
  
  
  
  
It took Amit only minutes to realize that the hunters were not open firing. If they were, not a mutant soul would be alive. The shots must be in warning, but what sort of warning? Why not kill them now and get the bloody job over with? Concentrating hard, Amit stole the electricity from the visor sunglasses that the hunters wore and spread the charge throughout the bridge, shocking the first line of troops. No luck. The second line fired several more shots in warning. What were they waiting for?  
  
"You will stand," a menacing voice spoke in English, instead of Prowl-Gab.  
  
*Do as they say,* Tyler transmitted the message to both teams, *We'll see just what their game is.*  
  
"Line up," the voice commanded once more. A memory rang back in Hannah's head. Ever since she began to read chapter books, she had become obsessed with Holocaust literature. Perhaps it was because that time period, in an awful, yet ironic matter, did not seem so different from the current time. She heard many stories of this kind of matter and had no doubt of their intent.  
  
Tyler picked up on her thoughts and did his best to stay calm. He was the leader. Leaders stay in control. But those five simple words that radiated out of Hannah's thoughts were so true and inevitable that it was so hard not to break down. They're going to shoot us! Her tiny voice rang into the communicators, a warning sign that they all must heed, but was it too late?  
  
"What can we do?" Alyce asked them all, but not weakly. She knew very well that all their powers combined could not the defeat the forces that outnumbered them. To even attempt was suicide.   
  
Their fate was clear now. The hunters would line them up and shoot them, only to steal their valuables and possessions. Lining them all up would stop them from running, and make them believe that they would be saved. The hunters believed, although not unreasonably, that the X-Teams were naïve children who could trust. What they seemed to forget is that the innocent children had lost all they could trust, save their teammates, and were not easily fooled.   
  
Silence rang over the com links. Breaking the silence, Sabine answered Alyce's question. "Rien. Nothing. There is nothing we can do."  
  
She hated feeling as if she was trapped in a precipice. Deep, dark tension mounted within her, building up along with the throbbing of her scar. She wanted to do something, wished she could do something.  
  
The hunters pushed them into a line.  
  
"Fear not, children, all will be fine. We're just going to count you and take a record. I assure you that none of you will be hurt."  
  
"Like the devil," whispered Hannah.  
  
***  
  
"Sir," Viktor of Neo-Excalibur stood before the computer professor who once was the kindly crippled mentor, "Haven't the Neo-X-Men been out much longer than predicted?"  
  
"Yes, I'm afraid so." The professor's voice had as much emotion as a computer voice.   
  
"Vatever made you send out Extreme to the bridge?"   
  
"They need to start somewhere, Viktor, they need to start somewhere."  
  
"But Vhy? Vat vas there that vas so special that you had to send a team out?"  
  
"I needed a hound. They've added something more to the genetic mutations and I need a new one to examine so we know what we're up against. It's for the good of all of us! Surely you didn't think..."  
  
"Oh! But of course, professor....I vas just thinking that perhaps Neo-Excalibur should go out and make sure everything is alright..."  
  
"I don't think that will be necessary."  
  
"But professor! Knowing Sabine...and Tyler...they vould be back by now...I think it vould be best to make sure...."  
  
A mechanical sigh rang from the speakers which the professor's voice was hooked to. "Very well, Viktor. Send Neo-Excalibur out. Take the helicopter out! And good luck!"  
  
Viktor did not reply but rushed out of the office, glad to be away from the mechanical mastermind that led them. He knew that once this...machine...had been a mentor to his father, but now, there was just something in him that made him seem less like a man. It wasn't the computer appearance...it was something in the way he talked, and the things he said, but truthfully he wasn't quite sure what exactly was wrong. Perhaps it was just a figment of his imagination. The Neo-X-Men and Extreme were what was important at the moment.   
  
In his hurry out of the office he failed to hear the call of Tyler's voice over the intercom in the Professor's office.   
  
"Sir, this is Telepath of Neo-X-Men callin' Professor X. We are in trouble. Big trouble. Outnumbered one of us to every ten hunters! GW Bridge guarded more then we ever imagined. But please, for the sake of the cause, don't send out any teams after us! I repeat, don't send out any teams!"  
  
"Sabine! Tyler! What's has happened?"   
  
Sabine spoke up, "I don' think the team can get out of this one...but...but...Ah guess Ah always knew Ah wouldn't see the cause the entire way through. Ah just feel bad for Mike...an' Extreme. So young! Not ready to die for a cause! Don' send any more out! Dey're gonna shoot us! Spare the others! Dey'll be outnumbered! Dey'll die for sure! We need the others to fight for the cause! Mah signal will break up soon....professor....if Viktor tries to go out...oh Ah know he will...don' let him, please! Don' let him! We need Neo-Excalibur to lead! Please professor! Pass de message on...Professor...." All of her other frantic pleas were lost in a wave of static like the roar of an ocean. The professor simply shut off his com link.  
  
***  
  
She cried silently as she heard the click of the com link. She couldn't be sure if the professor would even listen to either her or Tyler. It was lost. Everything she had ever worked for, dreamed for...lost in the single of an explosion of a gun. Sure, she had always known that she would die fighting for the cause, but she never dreamed that it would be quite like this. Not in a blast of light and thunder. Not lined up with her peers so that they all could see the terror in her eyes. She wanted to die...alone...where no one could see her fear. Where she could have the moment of silence she prayed for. Also, she didn't want to die now. Not here. Not now. Funny, really, now that she knew for sure she had no one in the world was when she didn't want to die.  
  
She wished she could try to fight, but it was useless. Without anything of helpfulness to pull, her powers did nothing. Nothing. She felt as if she had done nothing, and could do nothing. She was a failure to the cause. Her power was useless.   
  
"Get into line!" This time jabbing guns into their backs, the hunters herded them like cattle.  
  
None of the X-Children even tried to use their powers. There was no use. With the one to ten ratio, it was worthless. No point. None at all.  
  
Sabine's scar was more than throbbing now. It felt as if it was swelling. But now the feeling, the painful pulsing and pounded had spread throughout her body as if she was trying to pull something to her that just wouldn't budge, and it banged against her with each mighty tug, bruising her body. It quickened along with her heart rate when she stood in line with her fellow teammates, for the last time. Faster and faster until all she wanted to do was blend in with her pain. She wanted to let go and swim in a sea of torture, loosing all her wits. That was just what she did. Her glowing scar shimmered brighter.  
  
***  
  
"¡Dios Mio!" cried Silvia as she saw the sight from above in the helicopter, "They're surrounded!"  
  
"Viktor! We should turn back! Going in there would be suicide!" Persyltha advised, noting the dismal appearance of the situation.  
  
"It's our duty to help varriors of the cause," Viktor was firm in his speech, "I'm gonna fly in a little lower."  
  
"It's suicide Viks," Fugio said uncharacteristically grave, "We can't."  
  
"But we must."  
  
Back on the ground, the brutal slaughter was delayed by the noisy blades of the chopper beating like the banging of drums in a blustery wind of bristling wings. "It's the helicopter," whispered Alyce, "I thought you told them not to come..."  
  
"I did," Tyler whispered.  
  
***  
  
As Sabine let go, the pulling sensation became stronger, but she no longer fought it. She was going to die anyway. As the pulling grew stronger, so the did glowing, and it spread throughout her body. The pulling became stronger and stronger, as if she was a black hole sucking the existence out of every living soul. She gasped and sputtered struggling with nausea and fever and terror all in one blistering stream of agony. All her energy and all her soul were being drawn into her very center. It was as if she was about to explode into a million pieces when the pressure become to strong.   
  
"Sabs!" there was a gasp from Hannah.  
  
Sabine opened her eyes and light-headedness overcame her. In her blurred vision, she saw all the hunters floating in a circle around her as if in orbit. She was like the sun, a glowing center of an entire galaxy of chaos. It all lasted for a brilliant moment, until the pressure became too much for her. It happened so suddenly, like a gust of wind so soon forgotten. She released all the pressure within her. As she did so, like flailing feathers in a hurricane the dreaded murderers flew in every which direction, landing with a menacing, dark, sharp splash in the water below.   
  
The release of pressure was almost worse than the gathering of it. She felt like a deflated balloon and gasped for breath. With the look of a deer in headlights, she fell to her knees, letting the remains of her half-digested breakfast spew onto the asphalt bridge. Still coughing and sputtering, she only seemed to flip out of her trance when Tyler put a questioning hand on her shoulder.  
  
"Are you okay?" Mike asked.   
  
"F...ff...fine..." she sputtered, falling back into a coughing spell and letting loose more of her breakfast.   
  
"What the hell was that?" Amit asked, though not unkindly.  
  
"Ah...don' know..."  
  
"Sabine! Tyler! Amit! Alyce! Hannah! Mike! Extreme! Ve're here!" Viktor called from the helicopter, letting the rope down to the now relatively mutant-safe George Washington Bridge.   
  
"Extreme," Tyler took charge, addressing the younger X-Children, "Are you all alright?"  
  
Muriel, eyes and nose dripping whimpered out her answer, "No...Tamara...she...she..." the young girl stammered, pointing to the spot where the girl, leg crippled and twisted under her body now thoroughly chewed on by the hounds.   
  
"What about the girl who was shot?" Tyler asked, although his confident leader-like air was fading, and softening.  
  
"I...I...I'm alright...it hurts though..." Naryce said, trying to seem just as leader-like as Tyler.  
  
Amit walked over and looked at the wound. "It just skimmed her. She'll heal. But it will leave a scar."  
  
"Why did they send you out here in the first place," Alyce asked, laying a hand on poor mangled Tamara's forehead, as if feeling for a sign of life.  
  
"The...the...professor wanted a hound, miss," Quixel explained.   
  
"He wanted a flamin' hound!" Amit was enraged, "This!" he cried gesturing to the body, "For a damn hound? We've looked at hounds five hundred and one times and we've lost this for a hound!" The boy was wild as he searched around the bridge where the carcasses of the hunters whom he had shocked lay. He picked up the carcass of a hound and tossed it in front of the feet of the others, "Well there's his bloody hound!"  
  
The Neo-X-Men stood just staring at the poor girl, each of them knowing how easily it could have been them lying there cold as steel.  
  
"She...she was too young to die, wasn't she?" Tyler sighed, "She was too young to be a part of this! She had no idea what she was signing herself into."  
  
"Sometimes I think we're too young," Sabine stomped off, grabbing Hannah and Alyces' hands as they all climbed up the rope and into the helicopter. Tyler stayed behind and helped the younger X-Children climb. Handing the hound carcass up, he took one last look at the poor Tigress body, and then finally ascended himself.  
  
Naryce's com link crackled to life. "Mission accomplished Sir," she tried to sound confident, "One casualty. One injury."   
  
"Good." Was the only reply. There was a click and she turned to Tyler, tears streaming at her eyes.  
  
"Is this what success always feels like?" she asked, her ten year old eyes starting to become fountains.  
  
Tyler was about to answer, when Alyce scooped the girl up in her arms and comforted her. Alyce was everyone's big sister. Tyler couldn't but help agree with the crying girl. This felt nothing like a victory should.  
  
***  
  
"So mah powers have evolved," Sabine repeated after the professor.  
  
"Yes, it seems that the full extent of your powers is greatly powerful. Every object, and organism on earth has its own field of gravity. You see, right now all of you probably have a spec of dust spinning around you in orbit, like a moon!"  
  
"Mine's called Bob!" Mike interrupted, his head tilting this way and that as if looking for his dust-spec moon.  
  
There was mechanical noise that resembled the clearing of a throat. "Anyhow, Sabine, you can actually manipulate your gravity and make it incredibly strong, or incredibly weak."  
  
"So when Ah could pull stuff out of pictures with mah de-evolved powers..."  
  
"What you were doing was manipulating your gravity so that an object in the second demention could be pulled into the third. Don't you understand what this means! Perhaps you could pull something out of the fourth dimension! Freeze a moment of time! You could have the key to time travel!"  
  
"Ah don' want to freeze time!" Sabine yelled, suddenly furious, "Why is this all you can concentrate on? We lost a life today and I think she deserves more than a second's pause!"  
  
"Yes, quite tragic really," The professor paused a moment, "But I have exciting news! I have been developing a new technology that I want all of you to test out on the field. Tomorrow!"  
  
"We have been out on two flamn' missions in a row!" Amit yelled.  
  
"The day after tomorrow then. But I do wish you wouldn't wait. This technology could revolutionize the cause!"   
  
"Sir," Alyce said quietly, "I do think the team needs a rest. And we probably should help Extreme deal with this mission." She rubbed her hand still red from all the tiny hands that had clutched it in the course of the day.  
  
"I second that opinion," Tyler said.  
  
"And I third it," Hannah spoke up.  
  
"Very well. You shall rest tomorrow. But the next day, you will try this new technology. No ands, ifs, or buts. Dismissed."  
  
Somewhat dismal, they all went their separate ways. Though none would admit it, the haunted image of the brutalized nine-year-old body still hung in their minds.   



	10. Night Watch File

IMPORTANT NOTE: This takes place the night before the encounter on the bridge. Actually, I guess it would be the morning of, because it's midnight. That's why Tamra's still alive  
  
**>Nighttime Electronic Watch Report #253234657657575765<  
>Date: May 21, 2025<  
>Time: 12 A.M.<  
>Electronic Eye #34534543<  
>Position: Sector: 3535333 Dorm: 36<  
  
>Sound: crying<  
>Sound: door opening<  
  
>Sabine<** Tamara, sugah, Ah'm right across de hall, ya know, an' Ah can't get no sleep wit ya cryn' like dat.  
  
**>Sound: sobs<  
  
>Tamara<** I...I...I'm sorry Sabine...I....  
  
**>Sabine<** Don' sweat it, Sugah. Ah was jus' wondern' why ya were cryn'.  
  
**>Sound: Sobs<  
>Sound: Sniffs<  
  
>Tamara<** I...had a nightmare...  
  
**>View: SABINE moves and sits on bed in room next to TAMARA<  
  
>Sabine<** What did ya dream about?  
  
**>View: SABINE puts arm around TAMARA.<  
>Sound: sobs<  
  
>Tamara<** I was running away from the hounds! They were yowling the death cry! And then I heard a voice in...in...Prowl-Gab! And then there was fire! And smoke! And flashing lights! And I was surrounded by the hounds! Then, I heard a whisper...it was my mother....I'm sure of it. She told me I had failed her and that she wanted to see me suffer! Don't ask me how I knew it was my mother's....I just somehow did....an' den the hounds made the death scream. Then suddenly...they...they...they were upon me. I was screaming in pain. I'm sure I felt it...I know I did. Like a thousand needles, and swords. Then I woke up.  
  
**>Sound: Sobs<  
  
>Sabine<** Ah used to have nightmares like dat all the time. Dey're no fun. Your momma left ya here when ya were one year old?  
  
**>Tamara<** Yeah...but why Sabine? Why did she?  
  
**>Sabine<** It's 'cause she wanted ya to have a chance to live, Sugah. Ya just gotta keep talling yoself dat.  
  
**>Sound: crying<  
  
>Sabine<** Shhh...It's s'alright. Dere's no hounds here. Ya've got twelve different X-Teams here protectn' ya.  
  
**>Tamara<** Sabine?  
  
**>Sabine<** Oui?  
  
**>Tamara<** What did you do when you had nightmares?  
  
**>Sabine<** Ah'd tell myself stories...like mah maman et papa used to tell me.  
  
**>Tamara<** Can you tell me a story?  
  
**>Sabine<** Oui. What kind of story would ya like?  
  
**>Tamara<** A happy story.  
  
**>Sabine<** Ah've never told anyone a story before, 'sides mahself. Here goes...it's a story mah momma told me a long time ago. Once upon a time there was a princess. She was a beautiful princess, who owned every treasure in the world. She lived in a palace with many friends, enough activity so that she was never bored and a handsome prince at her side. But she was unhappy.  
  
**>Tamara<** Why? If she had everything, why was she unhappy?  
  
**>Sabine<** 'Cause the princess couldn't touch anyone, Sugah.  
  
**>Tamara<** Why?  
  
**>Sabine<** She was born dat way, same as Ah was born with the power to pull objects into mah hand an' ya were born wit tigah stripes on your face an' hair an' can attack like one too. Anyway, 'cause of dis, she could nevah be happy. Until one day, her friend told her the secret to happiness.  
  
**>Tamara<** What was it?  
  
**>Sabine<** She had ta truly be honest wit herself. When she did, she would see a silver butterfly. Now, she thought dis was ridiculous. Who eva heard of silver butterflies?  
  
**>Tamara<** What did the princess do?  
  
**>Sabine<** Well, she continued living in misery, 'till her handsome princes couldn' take it anymore. He spied her while she was walking out in the falling snow one day. He reached out an' touched her. And he kissed her. There with the snow falling all around and the silence of the world as it was blanketed in white. An' a miracle happened.  
  
**>Tamara<** What?  
  
**>Sabine<** The princess wished so hard that she wouldn't hurt her prince, dat she didn't. She had managed to control it!  
  
**>Tamara<** Was the princess happy?  
  
**>Sabine<** Yes, very happy. So happy she began ta cry. Den, a funny t'ing happened.  
  
**>Tamara<** What?   
**>Sabine<** With her eyes misted from her tears, the falling snow looked just like silver butterflies.  
  
**>Tamara<** And they lived happily ever after?  
  
**>Sabine<** Well, no, silly, dat's only for fairy tales. She lived for each day as happily as she could, takn' in bad with the good. There are no fairy tales endings here, Ah'm afraid.   
  
**>Tamara<** Oh...  
  
**>Pause: 5 sec<  
  
>Tamara<** Have you ever seen a silver butterfly, Sabine?  
  
**>Sabine<** No...Ah haven't.  
  
**>Tamara<** Is that why you're so sad?  
  
**>Pause: 5 sec<  
  
>Sabine<** Yeah...Ah guess so...  
  
**>Tamara<** Maybe I'll dream of silver butterflies! If I see one, then maybe I won't be sad anymore!  
  
**>Sabine<** Maybe...  
  
**>Tamara<** And if I see another one, I'll catch it and give it to you! That way you'll be happy again.  
  
**>Pause: 2 seconds<  
  
>Sabine<** ....T'ank you. But Ah don' t'ink...  
  
**>Tamara<** I'll find one for you, you'll see!  
  
**>Sabine<** T'ink ya can sleep now, Sugah?  
  
**>Tamara<** Yes...I...I...I think I can. Thanks Sabine.   
  
**>Sabine<** Anytime, Sugah. Bon Suoir. Bon Nuit.   
  
**>Tamara<** 'night Sabine.   
  
**>End Eye Watch Transmission<**   



	11. Reflections

Author's note: This chapter is short and somewhat duller than the others. >_< But I had to write in some kind of break from the action. Please review this story! I really am enjoying it and would like to have some affirmation that others enjoy this story too!   
  
Oh yes, since I have too many shoutouts to give, and I love ya all, here's a present for all my readers ^_^ go here: http://www.virtue.nu/cgdragonfly/xpics.html  
  


>FIVE: Reflections<

  
  
  
Slowly, the sun came up over the mansion, lighting the sky a momentary blood red. Amit was the only soul up, a great massive figure lying against a tree, bare-chested, with his great muscles rippling. He'd come out there every morning watching the crimson swirl together with the violet and rose dusk. Something about it was reflective, let out the tension.   
  
Sometimes he just wanted to tear it all to shreds. The stupid professor with his research that cost them all little lives...those little lives too. They had no idea how to fend for themselves. Not even some of the older ones, like Tyler and Sabine, truly knew what they were dealing with. They were a good three years younger than he. Little did they know what they were dealing with. Sure you could read books about children saving the world from evil, and destruction. Even Sabine, who lived so far away from the world of fairy tales in which those heroic stories belong in, still believed deep in her heart that they would succeed. He had seen the fear in her eyes on the bridge. The need she had to live. He knew that she was like the rest of them, so fragile like a china doll. Nope, not one of them knew what they had done when they had agreed to live the legacy their parents had left them. He had been twelve at the time, but even then he understood what the professor had been doing. Give nine-year-olds stories out of comic books and movies with great heroes and dastardly, often terrifying villains, and you will see their imaginations come alive. They wanted to save the world.  
  
So he wanted to rip it apart. Sometimes he wondered why he even fought anymore. Someday the hunters would find the mansion and kill them all, then what had they accomplished? Nothing. Absolutely nothing! He had been there nearly since the beginning, and still felt that nothing had been done. He could recite several hunter attack formations. He understood part of the mutation process that created the hounds. He had discovered the way the sunglass visors that the hunters always wore worked. But what did this do? So they understood the enemy, but how did it truly help them? Had any attempts ever been made to save any of the mutants? And did the professor truly care about those who were trapped or did he just want to learn about how the hunters caught them?   
  
That fragile little nine-year-old girl-what had been her name-Tara? No...Tamara...she cracked so easily. She had no chance. Not one chance, be it in heaven or hell. Little muscle, tiny bones that could snap like twigs...did she really deserve to die like that? For a flamn' hound. A damn hound! How could the professor send an amateur team out to deal with hounds?  
  
It was times like that when he realized why he still fought, it was for the tiny porcelain dolls he worked with. He couldn't let them go out and break their necks. Though some of them had great promise and were amazing in combat, they needed someone who had grown into maturity to fight with them. Someone who had developed physically and mentally. They needed him, and lord knew, he needed them. Sure, he hated that hell-hole of a mansion. He felt like a baby-sitter sometimes. No true company, feminine, or otherwise. The only girl he could possibly get anywhere with was Sabine-but even she was too young, too vulnerable, and too inexperienced. He couldn't take advantage of her. Yet, he loved her, in his own brotherly way. But he needed them. He did need them. He needed their optimism. He needed their friendship. He needed their respect. Sometimes, he had to admit, he needed their skill. They kept him alive just as much as they kept him alive.   
  
The sun was coming up quickly now, morning awakening in all its glory. One again, Amit's doubts were at rest. He'd stay. He'd stay for Tyler who took himself and his position way too seriously. He'd stay for Sabine who did not know quite what she wanted most. He'd stay for Alyce who attached herself to people so easily, that she was so easy to break. He'd stay for Hannah, who looked up to him in all respects. He'd stay for Mike, who was way too young to be fighting, and needed someone to give him the courage just to continue. He'd stay for them. He only wished that he could be as strong about it as his dad had been.   
  
***  
  
Reaching down into their special case, Sabine delicately placed the contact lens in her eye, relieved to be going outside of the mansion on her day off. The contact lens' she wore were special, developed for her by the professor. They made her eyes look like a typical white pigment with vibrant, yet natural-looking, green irises. He said they made her look like a copper-haired version of her mother; a comment which annoyed Sabine immensely. Although she remembered her mom as gorgeous, she didn't want to be connected with her past that hurt so much to remember because she longed to return to it. Despite that one annoyance, the contact lenses were a blessing. They gave her the freedom to mingle with the normal folk. The teens who did not have to live in constant terror. She wondered what it felt like: not to wake up thankful that she was still alive. To take freedom for granted. How nice it must be. After placing the other lens in, she carefully smoothed down her loose curls, her red t-shirt with a leaping flame screen print across the bottom, and her short, black skirt that looked like a thousand black patches sewn together, in a manner that was neat yet funky. Then, she turned on the heel of her black boots and opened the door, to find Hannah waiting outside for her.  
  
The girl tossed her brown hair back over her shoulder. "Are you going with Alyce and I to town?" she asked.  
  
"Mais Oui! Ah'd do anything to get out of dis blasted place!"  
  
"I don't blame you," Alyce's voice called out, as the girl walked down the hall, "after yesterday, all I've wanted to do was get away!" Her hair was blond that day, as in these troubled times, even died hair could make you under suspicion for being a mutant.   
  
"Totally," Hannah agreed, " oh yeah, I've talked Amit into driving us."  
  
"Ah don' know how you do it, Hannah! Ah don' know how you do it!" Reaching for her khaki-colored purse with camouflage trim, Sabine followed the other two down the hall to meet Amit, who would be out in the front by that one old tree, as usual.   
  
Three hours later, the three girls sat together, daintly slurping delicious noodle soups using chopsticks and special spoons, at a trendy Asian noodle bar in the city. Glasses of Thai iced tea, which was sweet black tea with a splash of cream, sat besides their plates, already half drank, with careful restrain to keep from downing the entire glass cool, smooth liquid.   
  
They stared at another group of girls talking about guys and school - typical, everyday girl conversation. All three of them, Sabine, Alyce and Hannah, could not help but feel a wave of jealousy. Those girls over there had been untouched by the terrible tracking act in 2015. They got to enjoy simple pleasures, such as their parents keeping careful vigil over them, and then complained about it. Ah! If only.   
  
It was nearly funny, while mutants lived through a holocaust-like nightmare, humans continued their everyday lives, barely even realizing the existence of the hunters or hounds. When they were brought up in conversation it was always as "the special police" or whatnot. But it was rarely even brought up in the typical human world. "Mutant" had become slang for criminal. It was enough to give Sabine temptation to take out her contact lenses, and Alyce temptation to use her strength in some frightfully shocking way. But they didn't.   
  
After a while, Hannah grew uneasy with the silence of her comrades and broke the ice. "I wonder what sort of technology the professor wants us to test."  
  
"I don't have any desire to try it," Alyce said, "whatever it may be. Something's up with him. Everyone's noticed. Mike came into my room last night - that boy still acts like a little kid sometimes, guess it's because he came here when he was six before he could get too much lavishing from his parents. Anyhow, I was talking to him for a long time, trying to comfort him. The bridge was a terrible experience for all of us, even Amit, though he'd never admit it. And Mike said that he thought the professor didn't quite look at him the same way he used. Less compassion, you know what I mean?"  
  
"Ah've noticed it too. The way he talked about mah powers last night. Creepy."  
  
"Yeah...I wonder what's wrong. I know that Viktor's noticed it too. I was talking with him last night. He was asking about you, Sabs."   
  
"Yeah...figures...." Sabine muttered.  
  
"So you've noticed?" Alyce laughed, happy to be able to talk about something strangely normal.  
  
"It's kinda hard not to, non? De way he's always lookn' at me. How he always mentions mah name first when he talks about our team. Did ya think Ah was clueless?"  
  
"You don't like him then?" Hannah asked, slightly disappointed.  
  
"Ah don' know. Maybe Ah do, Ah haven't concentrated too much on anything of the kind . But honestly, Ah don' think he's mah type. 'Sides too many other guys here have looked at me like dat! Ah'm the eldest girl here, an' certain things come along wit it. When Amit was a little younger, he used to look at me like that too. It's because there's a lack of girls the proper age. You'll be gettn' those looks pretty soon too, Ah'd be willn' to bet."  
  
"Aw...you're no fun," Hannah whined.  
  
"Well, Ah mean, Ah've looked at all the guys, but never thought seriously about it. Ah'm not dat much of a prude."  
  
"Well, with the way you flirt with all them, dear, no one's calling you a prude," Alyce noted.  
  
"Ah'm no worse than you! An' Ah really don' flirt, Ah mean, when do Ah have time? Mon Dieu! How typical we sound!"  
  
"It's nice, isn't it?" Hannah remarked.  
  
"Yes, it is nice," Alyce agreed, sipping her tea.   
  
"One day to ourselves," Sabine sighed dreamily, "It would be perfect if Ah could forget about yesterday."  
  
"The poor girl. She didn't have a chance," Alyce whispered.  
  
"Ah had talked to her the night before...She had a nightmare about being attacked by hounds. An' Ah told her a story...an' then she went to sleep. First time Ah'd really talked to her. Known her by name, but Ah never had spoken with her before. Seemed a sweet girl..."  
  
"Why was she sent out at all?" Hannah sighed, "Her leg hadn't even healed yet."  
  
"Who knows," Alyce whispered, "but that's precisely the reason why I don't want to go out tomorrow!"  
  
***  
  
They were gathered in front of the professor once more, now more fidgety and nervous than ever. Who knew what kind of mission they'd be sent on this time? A mechanical arm reached over to a lab table, picked up six black objects which looked similar to thin beepers from the twentieth century, and placed them in front of the six Neo-X-Men.   
  
"These, my X-Men, are cloaking devices. They mask your appearance so that you blend in with the background," Professor X explained.  
  
"Cool! Like the one on Batman Beyond!" Mike exclaimed.  
  
"Well, yes, I suppose..." The professor said.  
  
"You must have a pretty dangerous mission in mind if you want us to test those out," Alyce said, a slight hint of disapproval.  
  
"Yes. It seems that the hunters are looking for all the mutants whose records they've lost track of. In other words, any of you who had a chip implant."  
  
"And?" Tyler questioned.  
  
"This sudden interest in all of you intrigues me. They could have looked for the lost mutants years ago, yet suddenly they just decide to crack down. Something is wrong. I want to be able to get as close to them as possible to figure out their plans. Perhaps even figure out a translation system for prowl gab! And I want all of you to go out to the old, abandoned back on Rikston Street and test them out before I send any team with them out on anything more dangerous."  
  
"Simple as that?" Tyler asked.  
  
"Yes. Simple as that."  
  
Tyler was relieved, "Well that should be easy!"  
  
"I don't like it," Amit growled when he was well out of hearing reach, "It's too easy. Two days ago a routine rescue mission turned deadly."  
  
"Ah don' like it either," Sabine agreed, "An' Ah've got a bad feeling about this."  
  
"What do you mean, Sabine?" Tyler asked, accustomed to being the one with premonitions.  
  
"Ah mean dat Ah don' like this whole idea. Cloaking devices! Dat's an awfully complicated tactic we've never used before!"  
  
"Aww...Sabs! Don't be so paranoid! It's a routine mission, and if they don't work, the bank is nothing we can't get ourselves out of!"  
  
Alyce shook her head, "I got to agree with Sabine. Something is not right! But oh well. We might as well just get this over with!"  
  
The team rushed to the blackbird, ready for the seemingly simple mission that lay before them.   



	12. Data Transmission

**>Data Trasfer: PORT #234562352124 to PORT#3541342144621423PrOfX<  
  
>#4JKSL<** How will I be able to find them?  
  
**

You'll be able to track them quite easily. They will be near point #2352342

  
  
>#4JKSL<** Excellent. You have said that these combined with the others will be a source of great power.  
  
**

Yes, they are the key to the succeeding of your mission

  
  
>#4JKSL<** Success will be mine?  
  
**

Success will be yours

  
  
>#4JKSL<** I thank you friend.   
  
**>ALERT!!! TRACKING ATTEMPT IN PROGRESS<  
  
>ATTEMPT BLOCKED<  
  


I do apologize, but I cannot allow you to see my current location.

  
>#4JKSL<** Damn you!  
  
**

Harsh words, considering how much I've helped you

  
  
>#4JKSL<** Someday, somehow, I'll find out who you are!  
  
**

By then, perhaps it will be too late.

  
  
>#4JKSL<** What do you mean by...  
  
**>TRANSFER TERMINATED<**


	13. Defeat

>SIX: Defeat<

  
  
Persyltha gently shuffled the deck of tarot cards, carefully and cautiously, as this deck was given to her by the owner of the Magic Eye Bookshop in her town when she had decided for the first time to turn to the goddess. She had been nine at the time, too young to make such a decision, some might think. That year, her parents had been taken, and through some sort of miracle, she had made it to the mansion. Ever since she had received the deck, it had never steered her wrong.  
  
After talking with Alyce, who was a good friend of hers, just that morning before the professor sent them off again (lately the Neo-X-Men had been more active than usual), she had made her decision to look to her higher self, and see what guidance it had to offer her. The awful events at the bridge, just two days ago still haunted her, and she was certain that something groundbreaking was about to occur. She didn't know if it would be for the better or for the worse. That's why she had to consult the cards. Divination.  
  
The only light in her dorm was the flame of a flickering candle, with which she could just barely see the beautiful illustrations on her sacred cards. She separated the now-shuffled into three piles, and then reassembled them. Concentrating hard, she thought of her question, and then whispered it aloud, although there was no one else in the room.  
  
"What is coming for the X-Children and all mutant kind?"  
  
Shutting her eyes, she drew a card, hoping that the answer will quell her fears. Scarcely daring to breathe, she opened her eyes, and stared at the card on the table. It was Death.  
  
She panicked, but then remembered that Death scarcely ever meant the loss of a life. Telling herself this over and over, she pondered the meaning of the card. Death usually meant a change, a great change, and most often a hard one. She shut her eyes again, and concentrated on her breathing, for a moment to relax her fears. Then concentrated again. Sighing, she realized that the cards only confirmed her beliefs. Shuffling them delicately, she repeated the process again.   
  
"How will this change be initiated?"  
  
Her hand trembled over the card as she chose it, a feeling of destiny. She opened her eyes, and gasped at the card before her. The five of swords, a card that symbolized defeat lay before her like a nightmare's breath.   
  
***  
  
"Look at all the guards," Hannah commented as they reached the bank, "I don't remember it being this heavily protected."  
  
When Rikston Street had been part of an extremely wealthy neighborhood, the bank here had been among the elite. It had three floors, the top one dedicated exclusively to a huge vault. On the roof, was a helipad used for when people delivered treasures from foreign lands that need to stay in a safe before they were to go on exhibit. Now, like many old buildings, it was in near ruin.  
  
"Don't worry, we'll have the cloaking devices on so it won't matter," Tyler said, "The professor wouldn't let us test something out if he didn't think it was safe."  
  
"And yet he'd send an inexperienced group to the GW Bridge just for a hound," Amit commented, "Ya got real logic there fearless leader."   
  
"Well, we know that there's nothing here that's too dangerous and valuable that we should be concerned," Tyler said firmly, "Alright, let's see if these things really work."   
  
He pulled out the cool metal device, clipping it to the sleeve of his uniform. The red button on the front bore the X symbol that had become so entwined into their lives. "Here goes nothing," he whispered. Pushing the button, suddenly where Tyler had stood was a patch of blue sky with few clouds.   
  
"Wicked!" Hannah exclaimed, reaching for her own.   
  
"This is too cool!" Mike was overjoyed, "Just like something out of a comic book!"  
  
Soon all six were camouflaged into the background and were ready for action.   
  
"I think we probably should just go down, and then back up again," Tyler announced, "If they don't see us within that time period, then we know these cloakers actually work."  
  
"Ah guess dat's as good a plan as any," Sabine said, "Let's get dis over with."  
  
As they stepped into the bank, Alyce couldn't help but get the feeling that they were being watched.  
  
***  
  
Spinning by his tail, Viktor grabbed onto a chandelier, and then turned a back flip, landing on his feet. Sylvia, and two girls from Neo-X-Factor, Rosalie, the leader, and Rika applauded loudly as he bowed low. Though quite serious in his duties as the leader of Neo-Excalibur, he seemed another person during leisure time.   
  
"¡Fantastico! How do you do that?" Sylvia.  
  
Viktor laughed, "Agility!"  
  
"No kidding," commented Rosalie.  
  
"You're amazing Viktor!" Rika laughed.  
  
"Ja? Do you think Sabine thinks so too?"  
  
"Honestly, Viks, I don't know what you see in that depressed little drama queen!" Rosalie groaned.   
  
"Not your job to decided my reasons, ja?"  
  
"Whatever."  
  
"Has anyone seen Persyltha around lately?" Rika asked.  
  
Sylvia shook her head, "Not since este mañana." (this morning)  
  
"She said she vas going to read her tarot cards or some junk," Viktor said.  
  
"Does it really take this long?" Rika commented.  
  
"Oh she's very serious about what she does," Sylvia said, "It is her religion after all."  
  
Just then, Persyltha stumbled into the room, white as marble and eyes shinning like cornered prey.  
  
"Vat's wrong Sylph?" Viktor was concerned.  
  
"¡Calmáte chica! ¿Que paso?" Sylvia cried. (Calm yourself girl. What happened?)  
  
"Oh Vik! I saw it in the cards!"  
  
"Saw vat?"  
  
"Disaster! Defeat! It's coming! Something awful is going to happen!"  
  
"Are you sure you didn't misread your cards?" Rika asked, feeling Persyltha's devout faith in her cards silly.   
  
"I couldn't have! The cards never lie! Never, never, never have they steered me wrong!"  
  
***  
  
"There's someone tailing us!" Alyce whispered into her communicator to Tyler.  
  
"Are you sure? I see no one. How could they see us?"  
  
"Don't worry, Shugotenshi, nothing's going to go wrong!" Mike said encouragingly.  
  
"But I see him! He's there!"  
  
"Don't be so worried! I sure it's just a look out making his rounds," Tyler tried to sound reassuring.  
  
But Alyce wasn't reassured.  
  
All went smoothly as they finished walking through the building at their leisure. It was a childish pleasure: being able to walk straight into the lair of the enemy without even hiding. Soon, they were back on the roof again and boarding the Blackbird.   
  
The operation had gone without a hitch. Everything went perfectly. Perhaps too perfectly. And then, in his mind, Tyler felt someone panic.   
  
"Help! Lycee! Tyler! Hannah! Amit! Sabs! Help!" a voice screamed.   
  
"Goddess! It's Mike!" Amit growled. Sure enough, there was Mike, being dragged away by two hunters; his cloaking device was now a pile of circuits on the ground, having been smashed.  
  
"I thought he had come on board with us!" Hannah cried.  
  
"Tyler! Land the plane!" Alyce screamed. There was a moment of silence, as Tyler concentrated.  
  
"What the heck!" he screamed.  
  
"What's wrong? Why aren't you landing the plane?" Hannah cried.  
  
"It...it...it's on automatic pilot and won't switch back to manual!" Tyler stuttered.  
  
"What in tarnation are you talkn' 'bout?" Sabine exclaimed, "Dat's impossible!"  
  
Hannah had already rushed to the controls, franticly trying every single trick she knew to get the computer to respond. "Dragon's blood! He's right!"  
  
"Mike!" Alyce screamed, reaching her hand to open the door to the plane.  
  
"Lycee don't!" Hannah grabbed her arm, near sobbing, "We're too high up! You can't jump out and save him! You'd die!"  
  
Shinning tears stung her cheeks with their salt as she sat down, head in her hands. "I wish I had wings," she moaned.  
  
Sabine crouched beside her. "Ah hate hearing dis as much as you do, but dere's nothing ya can do. We're gonna to have to wait until we get back and fix the computer."  
  
"But what if it's too late?"  
  
Sabine shook her head, "Dat kid's little, but he's tough. He'll be alright."  
  
There was silence the rest of the flight, the five feeling powerless as they left Michael behind.  
  
***  
  
"The loss of Mike," began the professor, "is a tragic one. However, for the moment, there is nothing you can do. By now he will be dead. May his memory live on."  
  
"May his memory live on," the five repeated.  
  
"He was a good teammate and a friend, and his devotion to the cause will forever be remembered as great."  
  
"But professor! Isn't it too early to give up? Can't we go after him?" Alyce spoke up.  
  
"I'm afraid it is pointless, my dear. I've already lost one; I cannot loose the rest of you. Any fight you put up will be in vain. There is nothing anyone can do. Nothing. I do not want anyone attempting a rescue mission, is that understood? I do not want any more lost."  
  
"But suh!" Sabine spoke up.  
  
"No ands, ifs, or buts. At the very least, the cloaking devices were a success. It seems that Mike simply bumped into one of the guards on the way out and they managed to find his arms and grab them. You will continue to use these on missions. Dismissed."  
  
There was a gloomy silence as they left the room.  
  
***  
  
"Can ya believe what he said?" Sabine was outraged, "Can ya believe it? Ah say we go after him instead!"  
  
"Amit could track him!" said Hannah, "And I'll go fix whatever problem there is with the autopilot on the blackbird!"  
  
"You're all crazy!" Tyler cried, "You heard the professor! There's nothing we can do!"  
  
Sabine glared at him, "We're crazy? We're the crazy ones! Well maybe it be good dat someone's thinkn' crazy for once. Look where the professor's so-called rational thinkin' got us dis week!"  
  
'Sabine! What are you trying to do? Go on a suicide mission and get yourself killed?!" Tyler yelled back.  
  
She froze; her red on black eyes became daggers, piercing all with their glare. It seemed that the reds of her eyes were burning with pure fire and anger, the kind of mythical beasts. "Tyler Nathan Grey-Summers! Are ya jus' givn' up on a friend? Why, doncha remember when it was jus' you, Amit, Mike, an' Ah? Doncha remember how he was so young, an' we used to read him bedtime stories an' tuck him in at night? Doncha remember dat?"  
  
"Sabine....I...."  
  
"An' hasn't he always been one of your good friends? Doncha play video games togeatha almost ev'ry day? An' now you're just givin' up because just one person thinks he mind be dead? Tyler! You're the one signing the death certificate!"  
  
"But the professor said..."  
  
"Tyler! We 'ave listened to so many things the professor has said and where has it gotten us! A few days ago it killed a girl! Non! Ah don' trust the professor! An' Ah say that we go rescue Mike!"  
  
"Sabine! I'm the leader of this team and..."  
  
"Leader!" the fire in her eyes had become a blaze burning on the fuel of fury, "Leader! Well then oh brave, tough, and fearless leader, why doncha try leadn'? Why doncha try t'inkn' for yoself for once? So you're the leader! Show me some leading! Lead dis team in the name of the cause.... Ah dare ya! No, Tyler, Ah t'ink dat if you refuse to come, Ah'm leadin' the team on the rescue mission."  
  
"You...you...you can't do that!"  
  
"Why sure Ah can. Ah am the second in command on dis team afta all. The duties of a second in command, an' Ah quote is to 'lead de team in the event dat de leader becomes injured, under de influence of de enemy, or otherwise incapable of his or her duties. Well, as far as Ah can see, you are incapable of leading dis mission. So Ah'm leadn' it. Who's wit me?"  
  
The others stepped forward, glaring at Tyler the whole time.  
  
"But...but...Sabs...."  
  
"Don' Sabs me! Ya know, Tyler, why don' you go tell your precious professor about all dis. Ah'm sure he'll want to punish us!" she turned to the others, "Now where doya suppose the hunters might have taken him."  
  
"They may be nearly at Mutant City by now, " Amit commented, "We'll need our snow uniforms. Jus' in case we have to head for Alaska. " He spoke of the quilted white jumpsuits with hoods and red X logo that were optimized for warmth in the snow.  
  
"Alraht. Ah'll get our uniforms while Hannah works on the blackbird. Let's try ta get dis mission underway ASAP!"  
  
"I think I've found the problem," Hannah said quietly, "there's a device attached to the plane's com link that I think could be causing the problem. The thing is though, I'll have to cut the com link to remove it."  
  
"That would mean no contact with the outside world! We couldn't radio for help!" Alyce exclaimed.  
  
Sabine thought for a moment. "Do it," she said finally.   
  
Soon all was ready, and the blackbird lifted off for the second time that day, hopefully to return with their teammate.   
  
Tyler watched them go. Suddenly he felt guilty. Sabine was right! He was such a hypocrite! How could he abandon Mike, his friend through thick and thin, a strong, and proud member of the team? And then, suddenly he knew what he had to do.  
  



	14. Interview- Alyce Worthington

Author's Note- Keep in mind that the interview sections took place some time before the start of the story otherwise it doesn't make sense. ^_^   
  
**>Loading...Please Wait<  
  
>Loading...Please Wait<  
  
Interview # 23456 Alyce Worthington  
  
>Alyce<** So you want to know how I got here? Well, there's not much to tell...really.  
  
**

Tell what you can.

  
  
>Alyce<** It's the most terrifying thing watching your parents get captured. I mean, especially when you're six years old and you're in one of those automatic transports bound for Westchester. I couldn't make the robot driver stop the transport, of course, because it's designed not to stop until you get to whatever destination you've programmed it to go to. I started banging on the seats and on the door of the transport. I was frantic...more frantic than ever. Too frantic to cry! I was afraid of the big net they had captured my dad in! I thought the big net was going to wrap around the transport and I would caught like a fly in a giant spider's web. With their sunglasses, black uniforms, and menacing grins, you can't help but think of the hunters as some sort of predator...like a spider. Or a wolf. I know my powers came prematurely, because they were pretty weak at first. Maybe the tension broke them out. I'm not really sure what happened. All I know is that I was banging on the door and all of a sudden, I sort of....punched it off its hinges! And at the high speed the transport was traveling at, I was sucked right out of it! That was the first that was seen of my powers. By then, I was in New York City, and for a long time that was home.   
  
**

What was life like on the streets?

  
  
>Alyce<** Hard. Food was scarce, and as I grew stronger, I had to be more careful. There are plenty of street rats tippn' off the hunters about stray mutants. Fortunately, it's not that hard to hide strength. If it had been any physical attribute, I would be dead, but not even my muscles show my power. It's just kinda...there. And then, then, one night I had a dream...I really don't even remember what it was about. However, I do know that when I woke up I remembered that I was supposed to go to Westchester. So I made it through. I was the last, but better late than never I guess. I only remember the dream, because it was the only dream I ever had on the streets. ON the streets, there are no dreams. Plenty of runaway kids. I used to watch camps of homeless teens, although I was afraid to join in case anyone found out who I was. The youngest in one of the camps was only seven. My age at the time. She slept with a teddy bear. I remember her like I remember my name. She was so forlorn, pale and way too thin. Her blond hair was matted to her face. And the expression as she slept begged for shelter. Whenever I see her in my mind, I think of the teams we have now. There's a song from Les Miz that I always think of, Les Miz being the longest running show on Broadway to date...remember...Hannah, Persyltha, Sabs, Silvia and I went to see it two years ago. It's the song Val Jean sings about Marius, Bring Him Home. Every time a younger team goes out, I think of that song. Those little kids, I can't help thinking of it. "He is young. He's afraid. Bring him home." Every time we go out, and I see little Mike in battle. He's like a brother to me, you know. I love him like a brother. I don't know what I would do if anything happened to him. Every time we go out, I keep thinking of those lyrics "If I die, let me die. Let him live. Bring him home." And it's like that every time. Mike is the only sibling I've ever had. Every night before we embark, I always hum the song. Bring him home. Bring him home.   
  
**>End Interview Session<**


	15. Change of Heart

Author's Note- I just got back from NY which is why this chapter was so delayed. Oh yeah, could you people just do a quick polling thing for me? Just email, or post in a review who your favorite and least favorite Neo-X-Man (or woman) is and why. It would help me so much because I would like to know what people think of my characters. Thankies.   
  
  
>SEVEN: Change of Heart<  
  
Something in his being told him that he should go; that the others were right. But the notion was foolish. He should stay. There was no way for them to leave without getting caught. And then they'd get their rewards for breaking the rules. But what punishment could the professor give? What could he do to them? He needed them to fight! He needed them to carry on! Even if Sabine and the rest were stopped in action, there was nothing that the professor could do to them.   
  
And yet, the professor was his mentor, as well as his father's-when his father was alive and Xavier a man of course. Could he really betray all he learned? Tradition. Yes, tradition was very important to his family. His father had been the leader of the X-Men, and now he was the leader of the Neo-X-Men. Tyler knew that perhaps in leading the Neo-X-Men, he was not the best leader, but he tried! Perhaps he didn't always know what was right! Perhaps when their part in this nightmarish world was over and the Neo-X-Men didn't return from what would be their last mission, perhaps people would whisper, "Tyler had spunk, but he was not even half the leader Scott Summers was." Perhaps Sabine was right. He was no leader. He was nothing. Wouldn't that mean that he should cling to the only thing he had: the tradition? Shouldn't he listen to his mentor? Or are all traditions made to be broken?  
  
What a choice it was: hold the tradition and stay at the mansion, and allow what may happen to his friends, and trust that they could make it through? Perhaps even to tell the professor so that they got caught but would not be hurt? To be a leader in the sense that he would stop the team from getting into an impossible mission? To save them all from death? Or should he try and catch up with them? To join his friends? To lead them through...lord knew what was in store for them? To try and save a teammate whom had always been his friend through thick and thin? Perhaps if Mike wasn't dead, they all could accomplish something. Which was the fairer choice? Which was right? What would a good leader do? And most importantly, what would his father do?   
  
***  
  
"Take off in T minus twenty seconds," Hannah, in the cockpit, called to the others, "Everyone ready?"  
  
"Go flight!" Amit, who was acting as a copilot, confirmed the takeoff.  
  
Alyce, who had just finished bringing up a box of provisions nodded, "Go flight."  
  
"Go flight," Sabine agreed, after double checking all the doors and controls. She detested all airplanes, and was rather safe than sorry, especially considering that they couldn't radio for help. Although they kept their personal communicators with them, they weren't very useful for radioing anyone outside of their team, except for the professor, which wouldn't help much considering that going on this mission was deliberately disobeying him.   
  
"Very well. Ten. Nine. Eight," Hannah began and the others chanted with her.  
  
"Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."  
  
"Here we go!" Hannah cried, as the blackbird rose in flight. She silently prayed that she knew how to work the blackbird well enough. Although she often had used the plane as a co-pilot, the pilot's job was so much more complex. To make life harder, she still didn't trust the autopilot. "I'm going to fly slow and low for a while until I get a good feel for the pilot's controls."  
  
Sabine bit her lip. She despised heights, but she was the leader now. She had to stay in control. She could show no fear.   
  
"Amit," she called.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Can...can...can ya believe Tyler did what he did?"  
  
"Truthfully? Yeah."  
  
"But...but...the way he spoke to me, like Ah was a child?"  
  
"He's trying to be a leader, darlin', he's just tryn' to be a leader. And because he's the leader, he puts others below him."  
  
"But...dat's not how a real leader is supposed ta act!"  
  
"I never said that I agreed with it. Jus' that I'm not surprised. Pull yourself together Gumbo Gal. Tyler's just a fool. He walks around like a straight-laced jerk 'cause that's all he knows how to be. Don't you work yourself up over him."  
  
"Ah hate him! Lawd! Ah hate him! Ah hate dat boy!"  
  
Alyce walked over to her, "No you don't Sabine."  
  
"Yes Ah do."  
  
"No you don't. Hate is a word for people like the hunters. Hate is a word for people who call mutants spawn of the devil. You do not hate him. Besides, what Tyler does and doesn't do is not the issue right now. Our job is to rescue Mike."  
  
"Yah're right, Lycee. Ah gotta lead now. Gotta get de team to Mike."  
  
"You can do it, Sabs."  
  
"Ah hope so."  
  
Amit turned from the cockpit, "And don't let that dick stop you."  
  
***  
  
Dust collected on the ancient motorcycle. It hadn't been used since...oh who knows when! His father had probably been the last one to ride it. What a chilling thought it was, having to ride the vehicle of a ghost! He wasn't even sure that it would work anymore, but now, he had no choice. He had to leave the mansion undetected, if he was going to go at all. Wishing that he could take one of the modern jetbikes that be was familiar with, he sat on the motorcycle. Such things were inventoried on a daily basis, but the older equipment from the times of the original X-Men was kept for memory's sake. The key had been left in the ignition for no one had any need for it any more. No one except for Tyler that was. Half wishing and half praying, he turned the key, had nearly fell off his seat at the sound of the roaring engine.   
  
"It still works! After all these years, it still works!" He cried. He pressed the clicker to open the garage and sped off, hoping that somehow he could catch up with the others before it was too late.   
  
***  
  
It was dark and cold when he awoke. For all he could tell, he had been lying there for weeks. Glancing at his watch, he realized that it had stopped long ago, not aiding him in his quest to find out the date and time, and for that matter, where he was.  
  
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, numerous stacked metal crates came into view. Creating some "fireworks" in hope that their light would aid his sight, to no avail. The quick blasts of energy blazed like explosions and then died faster than the eye could blink. Sighing at his luck, he realized that he had overestimated his well-being. A wave of dizziness overcame him, almost bringing him back to unconsciousness, but he struggled against it, fighting it to the end.   
  
Head in his hands, he tried to recall all that had happened. He had been on a mission with the others, and then, suddenly, as if they had known all along where he was, they grabbed him, and then all was as black, and as dim as much of his past remained. The lightheadedness overcame him again. It was too difficult to think, too difficult to breathe, too difficult to use his powers. The darkness faded into an impossibly deeper shade of black...  
  
***  
  
"You think Mike's going to be alright?" Alyce asked.  
  
"I hope so," Hannah called back from the cockpit, "Don't worry. If anyone can save him, we can."  
  
"Hey flamn' cat take a look at this," Amit pointed down to radar screen.   
  
"What the...what is that?"  
  
A strange shape flashed on the radar screen. Usually, it would not pick up ground vehicles, except if one seemed to be tracking them. This new use of radar had proved a lifesaver many times on many missions.   
  
As if in answer, Sabine's com link cracked to life. "This is Telepath paging first-in-command Hera. Do you copy?"  
  
"Tyler! But...Ah..well..uh...What de hell are ya doin' here?"  
  
"Thought you might need another person."  
  
"But Ah thought..."  
  
"Well, let's just say I had a change of heart, fearless leader. Are you going to welcome me aboard or leave me out here with this ancient hunk of junk?"  
  
Sabine paused, considering it for a second. "Lycee, let down a cable for him to climb up."  
  
***  
  
Moving. Something in him told him he was moving. Pain. Lots of pain. Wake up....wake up...but he couldn't. He refused to open his eyes. Was this death? No. It was too real. He was alive, but in a nightmare.   
  
Sweat, dripping and clamming chilled him to the bone, as he felt around blindly. The floor was metal. A sudden pain rushed to his legs, and he was afraid that he was bleeding. Was he? No...it was something else. A bruise perhaps. Were the others coming after him? Oh how would they ever find him? If his location was not even known to him, how could he even pray that help would find him?   
  
***  
  
"You don't mean we're heading all the way to Alaska!?" Tyler exclaimed.  
  
"We have to! They've taken him to Mutant City!" Amit said, "Are you going to be part of this mission or not?"  
  
"Do we have enough supplies?"  
  
Hannah sighed, "I think so. Alyce packed a bunch."  
  
"There wasn't enough planning. We don't know what's in Mutant City! No X-Team has ever gone there! Well...then again...there was Ramon of Neo-Excalibur, may his memory live on. The point is, no mutant has ever come out of there alive!" Tyler was outraged.  
  
"Well, he's not there yet!" Amit turned on him, " we can stop him on the way. 'Sides, perhaps we can do some research for your precious professor!"  
  
The two boys glared at each other, dagger-sharp silent messages being sent through a single look.   
  
* Neo-X-Men! I am very disappointed in you * a voice boomed through their heads, and rattled their subconscious, * I suggest you abandon this mission and return to Westchester at once*  
  
"What in tarnation?" Sabine cried.  
  
"It's the professor!" Alyce cried.  
  
"Ah'm sorry, suh!" Sabine yelled out to whoever was listening, just to be sure the professor could hear, "But we care about Mike an' we're not leaven' him ta die!"  
  
* Turn back. Now! Tyler control your team! You know that to turn back now will ensure the continuation of the cause. It's what your father would do. You want to be a good leader, don't you?*  
  
"No!" Tyler screamed, as if trying to convince himself it wasn't true. Everyone stared at him, shocked at the sudden change of heart. "We cannot turn back now. We have a teammate to save!"  
  
* If you do not turn back this instant, you will not be aloud in Westchester. You'll be on the streets *  
  
"Don't worry," Tyler whispered, "he can't throw us out. He needs us to fight.  
  
"We'll have to take that chance," Alyce yelled.  
  
* I warned you * the dark voice in their minds rang on and on and on.  
  



	16. Interview- Michael Drake

**>Accessing Data file #3253254<  
  
>Loading...please wait<  
  
>Loading...please wait<  
  
Interview #123453 Michael Drake  
  
>Michael<** Can we hurry this up! I gotta go blow up the Zerks!  
  
**

You can go back to your computer games in a moment. Just talk. 

  
  
>Michael<** Well, what do you want to know?   
  
**

What do you want to do when we accomplish our goal? 

  
  
>Michael<** Well, I mean, I guess we will stop the slaughter someday, won't we. Well, I mean, I guess I'll have to get married and get a job and all that boring junk. Oh yeah, I forgot about college. I'll have to go there first. Once we get rid of mutant city, and we will! I know we will! We're doing the right thing! Of course we'll succeed! That's why Batman always wins: he fights for right. Well, we fight for right, don't we? So yeah.   
  
**

What kind of job do you want?

  
  
>Michael<** Seriously? Well I want to be a cartoonist, ya know, drawing comics. Maybe some day I'll make some comics about our adventures. Or maybe my mom and dad's adventures. That would work...except I barely remember Mom and Dad. I left then when I was six. I don't even remember how...I just practically appeared here. Same year as Amit, Sabine, and Tyler. Hannah and Alyce came the second year. All I remember as a crowd of people...and...and...Sabs, Tyler, and Amit...they took my hands and brought me with them. I thought that they must have been the super heroes that I always read about. I guess I was right. But it was scary, man, all the people around -I mean, I was so little, remember?   
  
**

Yes. The crowd of people you remember were the people at the train station. You were given a train ticket and the three met you at the station.

  
  
>Michael<** Oh! So that's why there were so many people in that building! That's another thing. People stare too much if they think you're different. They stared at me, not because they knew, but because I was so little and alone. I think that when we do win, like every hero must, people wont stare. Their eyes will be caring. That's how we'll really know we've won. People won't stare when you're different. Cause, I mean, we're not that different are we?   
  
**>Pause 5 seconds<  
  
>Michael<** Can I go finish blowing up the Zerks?   
  
**

Yes Mike, you may go now.

  
  
**


	17. Point of Contact

Author's note- I'm very, very sorry for the lack of updates. Can we say MAJOR writer's block? Oh well, This story WILL be finished, I promise. Don't loose faith in me. I like the Neo's too much to let them go that easily. The song, "Broken Sky" is by a friend of mine. I wish I could say I wrote it. Don't the lyrics fit so well! Don't forget, your favorite and least favorite neo x man. ^_^ Oh yes, I have a website now www.eosrising.net. Nothing really to do with X-Men except it has this fanfic on it. Check it out! Another thing, there is one part where the tense gets all screwy. NO I'm not making careless grammar mistakes, I temporarily change the tense there on purpose. It makes sense when you read it.   
  


>EIGHT: Point of Contact<

  
  
Back in Westchester, New York, three figures sat slumped in couches listening to the dizzy, spinning song that had become the soundtrack of their lives.  
  


_Hopes and Fears are nothing but lies  
Silver tears tumble down as I cry  
Angels hear me, they come when I call  
Pray they catch me before I fall  
Close my eyes and hope I don't die  
In a piece of broken sky  
I see all I am and want to be  
The only thing I ever feared  
Was loosing all I hold so dear  
If the time comes when I have to choose  
Only know that I cannot refuse  
There is light in the darkness above  
Shinning down on this world that I love  
All to gain and nothing to loose..._

  
  
Persyltha, Silvia and Rika hummed the tune along with the mystical-sounding voice of the popular artist, Sparkler. After a strenuous danger room training session, it was all they had the strength to do. The professor had been in a terrible temper. Perhaps it had something to do with the Neo-X-Men's disappearance. And in her heart, Persyltha felt that it had been her fault. After all, she had seen Mike's capture in the cards. Despite Silvia's consolation, Persyltha felt responsible for the uncharacteristicly sullen mood Alyce had been in. There is nothing worse than feeling responsible for the sorrow of a best friend.  
  
"Don't blame yourself, Slyphie. Don't blame yourself," Rika whispered.  
  
The three sat in silence, not knowing what else to say. The reason for their worry was obvious. There was not a soul in the mansion who didn't know where the Neo-X-Men had gone. To the place of no return. To Alaska. To Mutant City. The very center of their broken world with their broken sky. A sky broken by hate and prejudice.   
  
"Do you think we can ever repair it?" Silvia whispered.  
  
"Only time can tell," answered Persyltha.   
  
***  
  
Eyes. Fluttering open. All that could be seen around him were the shadows. As his senses returned to his consciousness, he suddenly realized how cold he was. An icy chill gripped him like the hand of a shadow.   
  
He tried to create his sparks of energy, but he was still week and his reflexes dulled. Death. The warning shot through his brain. That is what happens when you are out in the cold unprotected. Death.   
  
There was the sound of a door opening and a gruff hand reached for him.  
  
"Outside kid."  
  
He struggled to his feet, dizzy and faint, on the verge of nausea.  
  
***  
  
"Got anything, Fearless?" Amit asked. Tyler shook his head. For an hour he had tried to make some connection with his friend, but all in vain.   
  
"He must be out cold," Tyler sighed.  
  
"Is there any other way?" Alyce asked.  
  
"We've tried everything! There is no way to find him if I can't connect with him," Tyler sighed.   
  
"I guess we have to wait," Hannah whispered.  
  
"Yes, wait," Tyler sighed. Mike. His best friend. The youngest of the team. Was he alive? Tyler did not want to mention his suspisions of why at the moment Mike seemed unreachable. He wondered if the boy had breathed his last breath.  
  
***  
  
The artic wind howled outside, as Mike was led into a base camp by the side of a rugged glacier cliff.  
  
Still dazed, and weak, Mike could barely manage a good look, but what he saw was breathtaking. Ice crystals, silver and sparkling like the diamond gown of a queen were everywhere, and the grandest diamonds of all were the stars that dotted the blue ink sky. With little pollution, and other outside lights, they were brighter than Manhattan all lit up at night.  
  
The men, hunters dressed in their dark uniforms, their faces covered, led him into the metal building, sticking him in an old dog kennel, in the foyer where it was only slightly warmer outside. Then the hunters entered the camp themselves, laughing as they approached the bar and ordered strong liquor.   
  
"No better cure for the cold, eh?" one of them laughed.  
  
"None that I can think of. What are we gonna do with dat bastard kid?"  
  
"What doya mean? We's under orders to bring him unharmed!"  
  
"Unharmed? I thought it was our job to get rid of the scum."  
  
"Not this one. This one's special."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"I donno! The boss don't tell me nothing."  
  
Shuddering, Mike curled up into a ball, and thought about Alyce. He pictured her telling him a story about her parents, so many so that they became his own, and he created his own memories because he had none. He could hear her voice now. She was there with him. He was in his room, it was night, and time for bed. Yes, time to sleep. Yes. And there was Alyce, sitting beside him, telling him a tale of long ago. Back when the only X-Men were Scott, Jean, Warren, Hank, and Bobby.  
  
"So Scott said, "Hank is going to strangle you when he finds out what you did with his science experiment.' Then, my father, Warren, said, 'good. Then we won't have to look after him anymore!' He was joking, of course. He says that your daddy was always getting in to trouble. Come to think of it, so are you. Tyler's going to kill you when he finds out what you did to his bedroom..."  
  
He smiles, "Well then, you won't have to look after me!"  
  
Alyce shakes her head, "No, don't be silly. Now go to sleep. It will all be alright in the morning."  
  
"Yes," Mike smiles, "Sleep." It is so cold in his room, but as he closes his eyes he feels all warm and tingly inside. Closing his eyes, all his worries melt into nothingness. He wants to keep his eyes closed forever and sink into this feeling of warmth..."  
  
"Mike! Don't!"   
  
Tyler's voice ringing in his head brought mike back to reality.   
  
"Whatever you do, Mike, stay awake! We're coming!"  
  
"What happened? Where's my room? And Alyce? And..."  
  
"Mike, stay close and we'll be there in a moment."  
  
"But..."  
  
"Just trust me. By the way...what DID you do to my sheets?"  
  
***  
  
Tyler blinked and returned his consciouness back to the rest of the team.  
  
"Did ya get him?" Sabine asked.  
  
"We connected just in time."  
  
"What do ya mean?" Amit demanded.  
  
"They have him out in the snow! Did you bring his uniform?"   
  
"I packed it," Alyce said.  
  
"He's going to need it, and more."  
  
Alyce sighed with comfort, her "little brother" was alright. One connection was all they needed. One connection saved him.   
  
***  
  
"Mike!" Mike!" The voice was distant as the cold. Despite Tyler's warning, he cannot help but drift into a half sleep. The cold is too much for him without his snow uniform, or anything to control the temperature of his body. He tries to stay awake, but when he closes his eyes, he feels the warmth surge through his body and he doesn't want to leave it.  
  
"Mike! Michael!"  
  
The voice again. It sounds so familiar, but he cannot place it. With each desperate cry he feels the cold prickle on his ears, then they run to his back and his whole body is enveloped.   
  
Alyce was panicing. He wouldn't wake up, no matter how hard she shook him. Was he...could he be....  
  
"Michael! Michael Robert Drake!"  
  
Who's voice is that?  
  
"Tyler! Dis be all your fault! If you didn't listen to de professor we would 'ave gotten here in time!" Sabine screamed, as she watched Alyce shaking the youngest Neo-X-Man with more and more fervor.   
  
"My fault! My fault? Without me, we never would have found him!"  
  
"You didn't want to find him, did you?" Hannah joins in, "You didn't care! You even tried to hide my tools, didn't you? They weren't in their usual spot when I got them to fix the plane!"  
  
"Just because you're disorganized doesn't mean I did anything!"  
  
The screaming becomes perilous, loud and concentrating, rasping through the night air, echoing and bouncing off the stars.   
  
And Amit knew. The men in the bar knew that they were there. Now they had stopped being drunkards and started being hunters. They were lying in wait.   
  
"Shut the hell up! All of you! Now! They hear you! What do you think your fuckn' argument is accomplishing?" He growled.  
  
They stopped, knowing that he was right.   
  
"MICHAEL!"  
  
The small boy stirred, and blinked.   
  
"Lycee?"  
  



End file.
